


Gift of the Magi

by illumynare



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: (except people who were already dead), Aftermath of Canonical Character Death, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fake Character Death, Gen, Guilt, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, I promise, Implied/Referenced Torture, Nobody you love dies, Psychological Torture, Suicidal Thoughts, hallucinated child harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:02:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9262172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: Wash has already gone through too much, been broken too often. So when they get captured by Hargrove together, Tucker figures he has one job: until the cavalry shows up, keep Wash alive and (relatively) sane. No matter the cost.Unfortunately, Wash is just as determined to protect him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be my Big Bang fic, except I couldn't get the draft done in time. Ironically, this means I get to start posting first! ...no promises about how soon it will be done, though.
> 
> Huge, huge thanks to a_taller_tale for the beta.

"On your feet, Private Tucker!"

Tucker's learned to hate Wash's soldier voice. That smug, cheerfully brutal, I-am-so-proud-I-remembered-something-from-Basic voice.

When he wakes up to it this time, though, what he feels isn't hatred so much as dread. Because there are only two times that Wash uses that voice. One is when he's about to put Tucker through another sadistic training routine.

The other is when they are totally fucked.

Tucker hurts all over, and his head hurts most of all. When he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees are like six warnings flashing in his HUD. The next is Wash—

And a row of Charon mercenaries behind him.

They're in a cell, Tucker realizes, a really high-tech holding cell with a viewscreen on the wall. And a fuck lot of guns pointed at them.

Yeah. Even Wash wouldn't make this a part of his training plans.

Tucker tries to sit up, but his hands are snapped into cuffs, and he can only manage an awkward lurch that sets his head spinning. Wash is right there, grabbing at his shoulders, helping him up. 

"That was an order, Private," he says, but his voice has gone softer now, like when he's talking to Caboose on one of his bad days. "How are you feeling?"

"Gonna be sick," Tucker mumbles, and Wash manages to pop the seals and pull off Tucker's helmet just in time.

Wash holds on to Tucker's shoulder while he's barfing. He keeps holding on even after Tucker's stopped gagging, and _oh shit,_ that's also a really bad sign. The last time Wash put a comforting hand on his shoulder was a month ago, when Tucker was being carried off the _Staff of Charon_ with two bullets in his leg and static in his head where Church used to be.

Tucker tries to pull himself together and be cool about this. "Dude," he says, "I'm totally a captain now, remember?"

"Only in the Army of Chorus," says Wash. "UNSC regulations clearly state—"

Tucker groans. He would bang his head against the wall, but it's hurting too much already.

That's when the viewscreen flickers to life, and Malcom Hargrove is staring at them with beady little eyes.

"This is all _very_ touching," he says, "but now that you've seen your companion is alive, we have some business to finish."

Totally. Completely. Fucked.

"He's got a head injury," says Wash. "He's needs medical attention. _"_

"I told you," says Hargrove condescendingly, "he gets what he needs _if_ you cooperate."

"Right," says Wash. "Tucker. I need you to stay calm."

Tucker's stomach is still churning. The memories are starting to come back now—a patrol out to yet another of those stupid alien temples. Caboose rambling about he can't wait to bring _all_ his best friends out here and have a picnic, and Wash pointing his gun at every shadow and demanding that Freckles run another scan, and fucking Palomo pretending he knows about girls just because Jensen is willing to hold hands with him now.

Then they split up, and guns. Flash-bangs. Caboose—

"He's fine," says Wash, and Tucker didn't realize that he'd said anything out loud, but okay. That's good. He fucking hates Caboose, but he doesn't want to explain to Delta why he isn't coming back.

He doesn't want to talk to any of Church's fragments, if he can help it.

"They all got away," says Wash. "It's just us."

"You're my prisoners aboard the _Staff of Charon,"_ says Hargrove. "And I assure you that we are now far, _far_ beyond the reach of your little friends."

Tucker ignores Hargrove and focuses on Wash. "What's the plan?"

That's, like, the one redeeming thing about soldier-voice-Wash. He always has plan. It usually involves Tucker doing a million squats, but right now, Tucker will take anything he can get.

"They're taking you to medical," says Wash, way too soothingly.

"Uh . . . that's not a plan, dude." 

Tucker knows he isn't 100% right now, but he can notice that much.

"The _plan_ is stay calm and wait for the others to come for us," says Wash. "Everything's going to be fine," which is such an obvious lie that Tucker wants to call him on it, except Wash is already turning away and marching toward the guards. Stoically. 

Tucker decides that Wash has a point, that it's not worth trying to start a fight now while his head is pounding and he (probably) can't walk in a straight line. 

And okay, maybe part of his brain has started gibbering because they're back on the _Staff of Charon,_ and Wash walking away from him looks like—he didn't even _see_ Church leaving, that's the thing, he was staring at the back of that asshole's glowing head one moment and he was gone the next and fuck fuck fuck Tucker is not having a breakdown over this right now. Seriously. He doesn't even _miss_ Church. 

Tucker tries to think about the hot nurses waiting for him in the med bay. Maybe he can seduce their way out of this.

* * *

The nurse is fifty years old and a dude and hates him. Tucker's never had blood drawn that angrily before, and who even _does_ that for head injuries, anyway?

They also take his armor away, and sure, it's not like it would do him much good with all the guns they have trained on him, but being stripped down to his kevlar undersuit leaves him feeling naked. The really, really not fun kind of naked.

On the bright side, there are painkillers, and a machine that glows like Wash's healing unit. Stolen Freelancer tech, or stolen alien tech? It's awesome either way. When they throw him back in the cell, he's already feeling a lot better. 

And hey, maybe things aren't so bad. Wash is right, the others _are_ going to come for them. And Tucker isn't ready to give up on a daring escape yet, either. He's already beaten the odds to make it off the _Staff of Charon_ once.

Of course, that time, the ship was right on top of the Communications Temple. It was easy for Wash and Carolina to get up there with reinforcements.

But the _Staff of Charon_ vanished after the battle. Nobody on Chorus has gotten a glimpse of it in the month since, either in orbit or landed on the ground. They were actually starting to hope that Hargrove had just booked, but apparently he's still hiding somewhere that allows him to send troops to a temple and kidnap people.

And the fucking UNSC _still_ hasn't shown up yet.

Whatever. They escaped once, they can totally do it again. As soon as Wash comes back, they can start planning.

Except Wash doesn't come back.

Tucker has no idea how long he's been waiting when his brain finally starts working and he remembers: Hargrove had said to Wash, _If you cooperate._

Yeah, no.

"Hey!" he shouts, because he knows this cell is bugged. "Take me to your bald and sexually impotent leader!"

It takes him another five minutes of shouting, but finally the viewscreen flickers to life, and there is Malcom Hargrove, glaring at him just like he did before that battle where Tucker was _epically awesome_ and Church decided to fuck off like a loser. 

"Do you think that this _tantrum_ will accomplish anything?" Hargrove demands.

Well, it got him Hargrove on the line, but Tucker is actually smart enough not to say that.

"What are you doing with Wash?" he demands. "You have some kind of deal with him, right?"

Hargrove looks smug. "Agent Washington has agreed to cooperate, because _he_ realizes what kind of situation you are in."

"And that means . . ."

And Hargrove smiles. It's honestly the most horrible expression Tucker has ever seen on a human face.

"My researchers have developed a new virtual reality training interface. It connects directly to the brain and has almost AI level complexity in the scenarios it can create. I think that Agent Washington would be an excellent test subject, don't you?"

Wow. Fuck no. Fuck that. Fuck everything.

"Dude. When you were putting together that creepy-ass trophy collection, did you even _read_ any of the reports on Project Freelancer? The last time somebody hooked a computer into Wash's head, he went catatonic and wet the bed."

Tucker wasn't supposed to know that stuff, but he might have gotten Simmons to hack the video records from Project Freelancer. And he might have gotten really drunk afterward.

"Unfortunately," says Hargrove, "I don't have a lot of test subjects on hand with neural implants from Project Freelancer."

And for just a second, Tucker freezes.

But he knows what he has to to. 

It's not that Tucker has any interest in that martyrdom shit. It's just. Wash has already been crazy once, and to be honest, most days his sanity is still a bit more held together with bits of linty old tape than Tucker is comfortable with. Like when he wakes up from nightmares, and maybe he's not screaming, but he's not there. He just shivers and looks at Tucker and Caboose with this blank, glassy stare and kind of mutters to himself, and sometimes in the morning he's still _not there,_ lost in his world of This Is Your Brain On Epsilon; Don't Do Epsilon, Kids (until Caboose sets something on fire, which wakes him up, usually).

Tucker _hates_ those days. They don't happen as often since they joined the Army of Chorus—bossing around a squad of terrified recruits seems to be good for Wash—but they still happen.

So what it all comes down to is, it doesn't matter what kind of ridiculously badass training they had in Project Freelancer. _Captain_ Lavernius Tucker of the UNSC is still a lot more prepared to survive anything Hargrove can dish out.

"Look," he says confidently, "you can _try_ to do this stuff with Wash, but it's not going to work. I've got implants from Project Freelancer too, and I'm going to give you much better test results."

"But are you going to cooperate?" Hargrove asks.

_It's just until they come for us._

_The others are going to come for us._

"Sure," says Tucker. "Just don't tell Wash."

* * *

Wash hopes that Hargrove kept his promise, and hasn't told Tucker about what Wash is going to do.

He knows what Tucker would say: _this is fucking bullshit._ Worse than that, he'd probably be _disappointed._ He was the first of them who had wanted to stay on Chorus and help. If he knew that Wash had agreed to work for Hargrove—to _fight_ for him—

But Wash doesn't have a choice. He really does believe the others will come for them, but they aren't here right now. They can't protect Tucker right _now._

That's why Wash said yes. That's why he's forcing himself to walk down this corridor, toward the med bay in the _Staff of Charon,_ no matter how terrified he is.

When he steps through the door and sees the operating table, for a second he can't move, can't breathe, because every synapse in his head that was torn and burnt by Epsilon is screaming at him to _run, run, run._

But Hargrove wants one of them to work for him. Hargrove wants to ensure that one’s obedience.

Wash tries to tell himself that it will be okay. This isn't like Project Freelancer. There's no Alpha screaming at the heart of the ship—

_that's what he remembers from Freelancer, static and screaming and_ Director, I just need more time, _because Epsilon woke up knowing and wanting to know, and in 0.08 seconds he processed all of Wash's memories, compared them to Alpha's and timestamped them with **simulation_00010** I'm sorry to tell you Agent Texas is dead **simulation_01010** Agent Washington is **simulation_101111** dead is dead is_

—there's no Epsilon. The thing that Hargrove is putting in his head is just a dumb AI like FILSS or Freckles. Dumber, even. It's the Mark IV Targeting-Lock Interface, and even if Wash has a lot of questions about who tested the Marks I-III, he knows he can survive it. 

He has to.

Because Hargrove won't let him out in the field unless he's got this thing in his head to control him.

And Hargrove looked at Wash and said, _I am prepared to guarantee the safety of your friend if and only if you can prove yourself a valuable asset._

Wash knows that Hargrove won't kill Tucker. The man pulling the strings of the civil war on Chorus isn't stupid enough to throw away his only leverage on a Freelancer who's shown himself more than willing to die taking down someone he hates.

But there are too many other ways that Hargrove could make Tucker pay.

Tucker isn't the same person he was back in Blood Gulch (and even when he was the worse soldier, he was the better man). He's brave and he's smart and Wash truly has total faith that he can survive anything Hargrove throws at him.

It's just . . . Wash knows how much surviving _doesn't_ mean.

( _he can't remember what color Connie's hair was, he just remembers **simulation_00110** and the color of her brains smeared across the cargo bay I'm sorry to tell you Agent Connecticut is dead _DIRECTOR PLEASE—)

Wash is already broken. But Tucker doesn't have to be.

That's how he's able to swallow his nausea and walk forward. He can do this, because he _has_ to do this, because he can't let another team die. He can't. 

There's a surgeon waiting beside the operating table: a tall, pale woman who looks at him with exactly the same dispassionate analysis that he remembers from the doctors and the technicians at Project Freelancer. 

"Remove the subject's armor," she says to his escort, not even looking at Wash. "Hurry up, I don't have all day."

Wash is stripping off his armor before he even realizes what he's doing. Because he knows this: the gleam of the instruments, the sour, flat sterility of the air, the eyes watching him like a distantly interesting experiment.

He lived with this for years. He didn't notice it at first—too desperately grateful for his second chance, his teammates, the Director's _kindness_ —but when he was Recovery One, he knew what those looks meant. Knew he was just a failed experiment, marginally useful for sweeping up the pieces of other failures.

Knew he would find a way to destroy them all.

The cold feeling settles back into his spine like it never left, and it steadies him. Because Wash has done this before: working for somebody he hates and doesn't trust, waiting for a chance to tear them apart. He can do it again.

He doesn't flinch when they strap him to the operating table. When the surgeon drones into her recorder, and the needles bite into his skin.

He _knows_ this.


	2. Chapter 2

Hargrove makes the deal with Tucker.

And then he fucking makes him _wait._

It's mind-games, that's what it is. Tucker vaguely remembers Wash lecturing him about interrogation techniques in the canyon, and okay, maybe Tucker should have listened a little better. He mostly just remembers staring at the canyon walls and thinking that the only torturer in his life was Agent Washington, and when Wash demanded, "What did I just say, Private?" he responded with his name, rank, and serial number, which got him another fifty squats.

Good times.

But there had been something about making people wait to psychologically undermine blah blah but a good soldier blah blah blah. Whatever. It's basically the same thing as a girl playing hard-to-get, and Tucker doesn't need any RTI training to deal with that, because when it comes to girls refusing to call or text, he is a _pro._

Except.

Except this cell is really small, and there's no one else, and it's—there's this particular smell to the air on the _Staff of Charon,_ and he can't stop thinking about that fucking trophy room and the moment when Church—

Tucker's kind of grateful when they finally come for him.

And it's not like it's going to be that bad, right? Tucker has no AI trauma. He's not going to get flashbacks. He just has to wait out whatever stupid tests Hargrove wants to put him through, and in like three days Carolina is going to be here with the rest of the cavalry, and they can punch Hargrove in the face and go home. Straight-up Freelancer justice.

When he gets to the lab, it isn't too creepy. There's a medical bed with restraints on it, and hung over it is a nest of a million wires with what looks like a big jagged piece of glowing green glass at the center.

So, alien tech. Fine. Tucker's been around the block with that kind of thing more than once. It can't be worse than that only-a-true-warrior bullshit at the jungle temple, where he had to fight a million Felixes. Tucker still gets nightmares about that sometimes. Whatever Hargrove has cooked up with his VR, it can't be that bad.

And the scientist is even kind of hot. In, you know, a really pale, sucked-on-a-lemon sort of way.

"Hey, baby," he says. "Do you—"

"Strap the subject down," she drones, not even looking at him.

"Fine, fine," Tucker mutters. He doesn't put up a fight as they hustle him onto the bed and strap him down. Because it's not a big deal. It's going to be okay.

Three days. Tops. That's all this is going to take.

He twitches when they pry open his neural implants and plug something in. It doesn't hurt, but there's this weird cold feeling, like a gust of air inside his skull, and then there's a buzzing sensation running down his spine—

— _it’s cold and dark dark cold—_

"—shut the _fuck_ up, Caboose, I told you we could keep him!"

Tucker's jaw snaps shut as soon as he says the words. For a second he's dizzy enough to puke, and he's not sure where he is or why he's yelling at Caboose.

Then he blinks, and everything's fine. He's on Sidewinder, the Meta is dead, Church has disappeared into the memory unit like a _fucking asshole,_ and Tucker's trying to pick up the pieces.

Caboose shifts awkwardly. "Yeah, but, I mean, he needs new armor."

"Why do we have to give him new armor? He fucked us over just fine with what he's got."

"Uhhh, because he needs to be blue if he's going to be on Blue Team. Duh."

Tucker looks beyond Caboose, where Doc is poking at Agent Washington, who's finally managed to sit up. He's got his helmet off, and he doesn't look like a badass Freelancer anymore. He's got a baby face under the armor, and his pale cheeks are turning red and splotchy with the cold, and he's staring at the chaos with a kind of dazed, dopey expression.

It's pretty pathetic. Especially since Doc is the only one paying any attention to him. The Reds are squabbling with each other, and Tucker's over here with Caboose, and—

"Stupid Tucker," Caboose mutters.

Yeah, Tucker is _fucking stupid_ because he's letting the murderer join Blue Team. But he marches over to Agent Washington, because this is _his_ mess now, and he never wanted to feel like he understood Church this much.

Doc is now shining a light into one of Agent Washington's eyes. "Okay, look straight ahead and tell me what letters you can see."

". . . you're giving me an eye exam?" Washington's voice is hoarse and incredulous, but he's not trying to fight Doc.

"Good vision is very important for a soldier!"

"U-N-S-C," Washington recites flatly, staring at the insignia on Doc's armor.

"Well, I don't think you need your prescription changed, but you should make sure to have an eye exam every six—"

"Seriously?" says Tucker. "Shut up."

Washington looks up at Tucker and he kind of—straightens his spine and falls in on himself at the same time. "Private Tucker, right?"

"Yeahhhh, _or_ you could call me the Mighty Chosen One. Y'know, 'cause an entire alien race chose me to be their savior."

"Right," Washington sighs, and then he just . . . waits.

There's an ugly feeling worming through Tucker's gut. He keeps remembering Donut rambling about _lightish red_ and Church grumbling about _your freakish hellspawn,_ and now they're both gone, and the fucker who killed them is just sitting there, not meeting Tucker's eyes, like—like—

"Dude, what the _fuck?"_ he says, and he grabs Washington by the collar and hauls him to his feet. "What is _wrong_ with you?"

Washington doesn't say anything. His head bobbles a little, but he's still not meeting Tucker's eyes, and the look on his face is just—

Tucker remembers a lot more about giving birth to Junior than anyone thinks, and he remembers when it hurt so much that he just didn't care anymore, it didn't matter if he died because it felt like everything that made him Tucker was all used up. That's what Agent Washington looks like right now, and _fuck,_ Tucker did not want to feel this sorry for him.

"The UNSC is going to put you back in prison," he says. "Like, as soon as they see you."

"Yeah," says Washington, still with that weirdly calm exhaustion.

Tucker is going to regret this. He is going to regret this _so fucking much._

"Okay, Doc? I need you to help me strip Church."

"What?" says Washington, his voice cracking.

It only takes them a few minutes to get Washington's armor swapped with Church's. Everything about the plan is freaky and weird, because Tucker _knew_ that Church was an AI with a robot body, but it's still kinda nauseating the way he clanks and flops over when they roll him out of his armor.

"I don't get why you're doing this," says Washington, as he snaps his new helmet into place.

"What, did they not have disguises in Project Freelancer?" asks Tucker.

As he says the words, he feels like something’s wrong. For a second he can’t figure it out, and then he realizes with an awful lurch to his stomach: he doesn’t have his sword anymore.

"Huh," says Washington. "Well, tell your friends I said thanks."

"Who, Caboose?" says Tucker, hardly paying attention. The sword’s not in his hand, not hanging from his hip, not lying on the ground near them. He can’t have dropped it. He _never_ drops his sword. It’s his fucking trademark.

"No," says Washington, and there's this weird, smug note in his voice that sends a chill down Tucker’s spine. "I mean Church. And Donut."

" _What—"_

And that's all Tucker manages to say before Wash shoots him.

It doesn't hurt at first. He falls over, and he can't breathe, but there isn't any pain. Just this clawing, breathless feeling.

There's a screech, and then another gunshot—Doc—and then Washington says, "Thank you for the armor, Private Tucker," and steps over him.

All Tucker can think is, _I fucked up._

He should never have listened to Caboose. He should have known this would happen. But he still feels this gaping sense of _betrayal,_ like Washington looking so pathetic was some kind of promise.

Fuck that asshole. Tucker isn't dying now, he's _not._ But his stomach hurts, _oh shit,_ it hurts worse than Junior, and he can't seem to catch his breath—

Tucker gurgles, and manages to haul himself up on his elbows.

That's how he sees Agent Washington walk right up to Caboose and shoot him right in the fucking face.

" _No,"_ Tucker wheezes, and he doesn't know how he gets to his feet, but it doesn't matter because Caboose has fallen over is already dead isn't moving is already _dead—_

"Dirtbag!" Sarge roars, charging with his shotgun. But it’s like Washington was never injured. He sidesteps Sarge, pulls the shotgun out of his hands and pumps it into his stomach.

Simmons shrieks. Washington flings a knife into his leg, follows it up with another, and _where the fuck did he get all those knives?_

Tucker tries to stagger forward and help, but two steps and there’s darkness swimming at the edges of his vision. He can barely stay on his feet.

More screams, more gunfire, and then—nothing. There’s no sound but Tucker's heart pounding in his ears, his own harsh breaths. He's the last man standing.

Then he isn’t standing anymore, because the adrenaline is seeping out of him, and he falls to his knees.

Everywhere he looks, there’s blood in the snow.

He was the last one left alive in Sandtrap too, but back then he could hope that the others were coming for him.

"What's the matter, Private Tucker?" Wash is right there by his side again—when did he move—wait, _when did Tucker start calling him Wash?_

 _Uh, like two days after he joined Blue Team?_ says a voice that sounds like Church, but that's not possible because Church is dead. Church is always dead.

 _No, duh! The point is,_ this _isn’t real!_

Tucker feels sleepy. Blood-loss, maybe. His mind is slowing down; his thoughts come in chunks, bobbing up and drifting against each other.

"You're not . . . Wash," he says.

There’s a smirk in the way Wash tilts his head. "No, I'm Private Leonard Church. And I'm going to tell the UNSC how you all died fighting the Meta."

"You're not real," Tucker whispers, but then Wash lunges with the knife, slicing into his throat, and it _hurts_ he's choking on his own blood he can't breathe oh fuck oh fuck—

_Tucker! Tucker, it's okay!_

—it _hurts—_

—and Tucker wakes up choking and thrashing against the restraints.

For a few seconds it's still real, he still feels the raw, gaping edges cut into his throat, the blood pouring out. But then he realizes that he's still breathing. He's still alive, his face is awkwardly smushed into the padding of the medical bed, and the only liquid pooled around him is his own spit, because eww, apparently he drools when he's hooked into a VR.

It wasn't real.

The relief hits Tucker in stages. First: he's alive. Second: Caboose is alive, he's back at base with Carolina by now. Third: the Reds are alive too. Fourth: Doc is . . . who cares, but Wash didn't shoot him in the gut either.

Wash didn't shoot anyone. When they packed him into Church's armor on Sidewinder, he said, "I don't get why you're doing this," in that tired, defeated voice, but then Caboose started shouting about _best friends forever,_ and then the UNSC turned up and somehow it was all okay.

Tucker realizes he's shaking. The simulation was fake, but the adrenaline it sent pumping through his body is totally real.

The memory of his throat splitting open under Wash's knife feels pretty real as well.

It's okay, though. Tucker can do this. It's only for a few days.

He can do this.

* * *

The training floor on the _Staff of Charon_ isn't that different from the one on the _Mother of Invention._  It's not quite as big. Probably not capable of as many different simulations. But the way Wash’s footsteps echo in the wide, round room—the looming windows of the observation deck—the cold knowledge that if he doesn't perform well enough, the consequences will be unthinkable—

Everything that matters is the same.

"I hope you're not going to waste my time again, Agent Washington," Hargrove says through the loudspeakers. "I have limited patience."

"Yeah, I'd hate to disappoint you," says Wash, adjusting his grip on his rifle.

Yesterday was a failure. He managed to start the simulation, but then he panicked. Lost control. It wasn't good. But he practiced all night with the safety settings on, and now he's going to do this because he _has_ to do this. Tucker doesn't get to live unless Wash goes out on missions and Wash isn't allowed on missions until he proves that he can used the Mark IV Targeting-Lock Interface.

He hopes that Tucker's doing okay. So far he’s only been shown brief clips of surveillance footage. He's not allowed to meet him again until after his first mission.

"FILSS, start the testing sequence," says Hargrove.

"Initiating testing sequence now," says FILSS. Her voice is dull, obedient; Wash knows she helped the others when they were aboard the _Staff of Charon,_ but he doesn't think she’ll do anything for him and Tucker now.

Holographic blue hexagons appear around him in a ring and start rotating. Wash lets out a slow breath, tries to release the tension from his shoulders. He lets his eyes unfocus, because that's the best way to notice—

There. At the edge of the his vision, one hexagon has turned from blue to gold.

The next instant, it's ringed in two red circles. They look like part of his HUD, but Wash is nauseatingly aware that they're not passing through his optic nerves, they're being funneled straight to his occipital lobe by the Mark IV.

 _Target acquired._ The voice is precise, mechanical. A lot like Freckles. _Eliminate?_

"Confirm," says Wash, but his arms are already lifting the rifle, pulling the trigger.

It feels like a reflex, but Wash knows it's not. He knows that it's the Mark IV moving his arms and sending the bullets straight through the center of the target. His heart jumps, and he can't help flinching back, trying to jerk his arms free even though thing is _inside_ him.

To the left, another hexagon turns gold. _Target acquired._

Wash whirls to face it. The movement is sloppy, overshooting, and he knows that he's about to fail again. But he can't fail, he _can't._  "Confirm," he manages to gasp, and his gun spits bullets again, and—

_**simulation_11010** live rounds on the training room floor and Maine is ripped almost in half, blood spreading around him in a pool, Wyoming alive but his spine snapped, the grenade paints York across the wall and I'm sorry to tell you I'm sorry to tell you I'm sorry_

—there are more hexagons turning gold around him, _target-target-target acquired,_ and Wash lets go. He whispers, “Safety off,” and he lets the Mark IV grip his brainstem and spin him around, gun firing. There are multiple holographic rings now, rotating at different angles, rolling around the training room floor; Wash whirls, and ducks, and somersaults, and shoots every target as it appears, his mind a white fog of panic. There’s no _target acquired_ and no _confirmed;_ there’s just a gun and the computer firing it. Wash is only a conduit.

Slowly, he realizes that it's over. That FILSS has already said, "Sequence complete," and the targets have disappeared.

His heart is pounding and his breath is rasping in his throat. But he did it. He isn't going to watch Tucker die.

"Excellent work," Hargrove says from above him. "Welcome to the team, Agent Washington."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES THIS STORY LIVES (in the wonderful land of "now AU because new canon").
> 
> After much consideration, I decided to change the rating on this story to "M", because while the violence is not very graphic, some of the situations are potentially pretty disturbing. Also because I felt bad about all the swearing. Stay in school, kids, and don't use Tucker or Wash's vocabulary.

Wash passes the test. And then Hargrove makes him wait.

Two days.

Wash wants to shout himself hoarse, to demand that they let him out into the field, or at least let him see Tucker—but he doesn't. He doesn't, because with every hour he feels less like _Wash_ and more like Recovery One. He's remembering all the instincts he learned, so slowly and so quickly and so painfully.

Half-conscious, convinced he was alone, and Locus's prisoner, Wash had snarled, "Fuck you, _monster."_ Surrounded by the Federal Army of Chorus, he had screeched at General Doyle for a reason not to kill him that very second.

But when he was Recovery One?

He hadn't been polite. That was the secret, how he had managed to fool even the Counsellor. He hadn't pretended to like them or feel loyalty to them. He'd been bitter and angry because they wanted him that way, _expected_ him that way, and he let them think they were using his bitterness to control him.

But he hadn't ever defied them, or made demands of them. That's not something you try, when somebody holds that kind of power over you. When you can't afford to let them suspect, for even a moment, that you aren't as obedient as they think.

Back then, he obeyed for the sake of revenge. A chance to finally tear down Project Freelancer and make them pay.

Now it's for Tucker. Wash can't let a teammate die ever again.

So he waits, and he grumbles at the technicians who tinker with his armor, the scientist who puts him back in the medical bed so she can make some final adjustments to the Mark IV. He goes back to the training floor and fights his way through more drills. When the viewscreen in his quarters finally beeps and flickers to life, and Hargrove tells him that he's leaving on a mission, Wash rolls his eyes—invisible behind his helmet—and says, "Wow. Don't move too fast."

"Do I need to remind you, Agent Washington—"

"No," says Wash, short and fast, and he doesn't try to keep the panic out of his voice, because Hargrove wants this. Wants to know how afraid he is.

And Hargrove smiles. "Your escort will arrive shortly. You'll receive mission objectives once you're on the ground."

Of course they're not going to tell him anything in advance. Wash doesn't mind. It doesn't matter what Hargrove is sending him to do. All he needs is a chance to get off the _Staff of Charon,_ and he can send a message, leave a trail— _something_ to lead the others back to them.

One chance. That's all he needs.

A minute later the door to his room opens. There are guards, and there's also the scientist. She looks him over, and then says, "Initiate."

Wash knows what that means now; they've done enough tests.

"Safety off," he says, and hears the Mark IV inside his head: **_Acknowledged._**

It's different, standing here in his cell instead of fighting on the training floor. The Mark IV doesn't instantly seize control of his nervous system, but there's a hum at the base of his head, and a shiver running over his skin.

The scientist starts punching buttons on a controller.

 ** _Initiating transport mode_** _,_ says the Mark IV.

Everything goes dark.

When Wash is aware again, he's strapped into a seat in a Pelican, but the ship isn't moving. There are two mercenaries with him; one points a gun at him while the other unstraps him, then knocks on his helmet.

"Awake?"

"Yeah," says Wash, getting to his feet.

He thinks he can feel the cold weight of the Mark IV squatting at the base of his skull, and his skin crawls. They can shut him down with a flick of a switch, and he remembers the way Epsilon made his body feel not his own, peripheral hardware to be shut down before final deletion.

One by one, Wash curls his fingers into a fist. Flexes them free again. Forces himself to breathe slowly.

He can do this. It's just a dumb AI. He can do this.

He has to.

"What a fucking nutjob," one of the mercenaries whispers.

"Shut up, you're on the open channel."

"Oh shit."

Wash doesn't care. Hargrove's instructions are downloading, words writing themselves across his HUD:

INFILTRATE HYPERION. DOWNLOAD INFORMATION FROM CENTRAL COMPUTERS.

Wash knows what Hyperion is: the one city continuously held by Federal forces throughout the entire civil war. It's the center of coordination for the entire eastern half of the continent, which includes most of the farming territory. Wash has visited it twice, once with Doyle just after their "rescue" by the Federal Army, and once with Kimball after they defeated the mercenaries.

Now he has to infiltrate it for Hargrove.

The bay doors of the Pelican open. Wash seems the glowing city skyline. They're on the outskirts.

 ** _Ready for combat,_** the Mark IV drones in his head, and Wash feels like he's freezing. Because the safety is off. He's sure he won't be able to turn it on again until he's back on the _Staff of Charon._

He remembers how it fired his gun like his fingers were just another trigger.

Every thought Wash had of letting himself be seen on this mission vanishes.

* * *

The good news is, he doesn't shoot anyone. Wash manages to dodge all the security patrols, knock out with a non-fatal move the one guard he can't dodge, and get to the central computer.

The bad news is, he's successful. Wash hooks the drive he was provided with into the computer, and whatever program Hargrove is using . . . does what it's mean to. Wash wonders if it's really just downloading information, or leaving some kind of virus.

It doesn't matter. He has to succeed if he wants Tucker to live. If he doesn't want the Mark IV to make him murder all the guards in this place.

He hears a sound and ducks down behind the computer panel. Two guards walk past, muttering to each other, and Wash doesn't move, doesn't breathe—

**_simulation_010100_ ** _Florida and Connecticut leave on an infiltration mission but don't come back, and I'm sorry to tell you they've been captured, there's footage of their interrogation and we need you to analyze_

—until the guards are gone. A moment the computer program drones "Download complete" in a dead voice across the open channel, and Wash is out of time. He has to get back to the Pelican.

He has to leave a trail _now._

Hargrove sent him out with his old armor, his old gear. Wash still has the little knife that he used when he was the rookie at Project Freelancer, that he used when he was Recovery One, that Carolina has seen a hundred times, and he leaves it on the floor behind him as he sneaks out.

The unconscious guard will cause an investigation. The knife will be fond as evidence, and Carolina will know it's Wash.

She still won't know where is. But Wash doesn't know that either. Hargrove could have gone to ground anywhere on the planet, or hidden behind one of the moons, and Wash wouldn't be able to tell the difference because he was unconscious for the whole trip to Hyperion.

He'd hoped to do better. But as Wash heads back to the Pelican, all he can think is: at least he kept Tucker safe.

Maybe things will be okay.

* * *

"Come on, _Captain Tucker,"_ Felix sing-songs over the radio. "Don't you want to say hello to your friends?" He snickers. "I mean, what's left of them."

Tucker's still in his hiding spot, back pressed against a rock. He can't see anything except the wall of the cave. His hands are clenched on his rifle, and he knows—he knows he should at least try.

But he can't move.

He can't fucking _move._

"Oh, wow, look at that!" says Felix. "Somebody's trying to crawl away."

The gunshot is a loud _crack_ through the radio.

"Yeah, I hope you didn't want the fatass back."

And Tucker has his jaw clamped shut, but he can't help the little noise that escapes. He'd thought Grif was already dead. He was the first of them to surrender—

_"C'mon, guys," Felix said over the radio, "if you turn yourselves over then I'll let Wash here take a little break."_

_There was a horrible silence. They were all together in cave, all looking at each other, and Tucker knew he should say something,_ do _something, but Wash's screams were still echoing in his skull and he couldn't think._

_Then Wash gasped out, "Fuck you," and then louder, "Guys, don't let him—"_

_The words broke off into a moan of pain._

_"Welp," said Grif, "I'm tired of this." He looked around at the others. "See ya."_

_"What?" Simmons shrieked. "But—but—you can't surrender!"_

_"Simmons, when have I ever_ not _taken the path of least resistance?"_

_"Surrender is absolutely unacceptable for a soldier of the Red Army! Leave the pointlessly dramatic deaths to the Blues!"_

_"Permission to speak defiantly, sir? I QUIT."_

—and Tucker had watched him go. He'd watched, and done _nothing,_ because he was too fucking scared to even move.

If Tucker had gone then, maybe he could have shot Felix. At least he might have been able to shoot Wash. Then the others would still be alive.

He should have gone. He _wanted_ to go. He still wants to get up and do the right thing, but he can't.

"Seriously, Tucker, I'm disappointed. You talked _so much_ about how you wanted to rescue your friends, but I guess you didn't mean it, huh?"

Felix is right. They're all dead because Tucker was too chicken. Even Caboose. Tucker tried to keep him from surrendering, but in the end he couldn't stop him.

_"Tucker, I—I don't like this game. I think, you know, Agent Washington doesn't like it either."_

_"Shut up, you moron, don't—don't—"_

But Caboose wouldn't listen, and Tucker wasn't brave enough to follow him. He didn't see Caboose die, but he heard the sounds that Wash made, and he's never going to forgive himself for this, never.

He keeps thinking, _I'm gonna do it,_ but he just can't move. The sound of Felix's voice runs right down his spine, locking him in place, and it doesn't matter what he wants to do. He can't _move._

**_Okay, man, it's okay, it's not— Wow. That's really fucked up._ **

Tucker shudders. The voice sounds like Church, but it's not real.Church is dead. He killed himself near the start, burned himself out and fried Carolina's brain as he went. _I won't let you touch her again, motherfuckers._

Wash only started screaming after that. If Tucker had just been brave enough to—

But he just. Can't. Move.

**_Yeah, that's because they fucked with your prefrontal cortex. You're not lucid dreaming this time. It's okay, you just gotta ride out it._ **

It doesn't matter what the hallucination says. This is still Tucker's fault.

**_Come on, this scenario doesn't even make any sense! You really think that_ none _of you idiots would try to help Wash and Carolina?_**

But they had. They'd all surrendered and let Felix kill them. Except Tucker.

"Okay," says Felix with slow relish, "let's hear from our guest of honor. Agent Washington, how are you feeling tonight?"

**_It's not real, Tucker._ **

_LIKE FUCK IT'S NOT REAL,_ Tucker yells back silently, even though Church isn't sitting in his implants, isn't there, is dead is dead is dead—

"Tucker," says Wash, and it's this soft, broken whisper that instantly turns Tucker to _stone_ , leave his brain nothing but a ceaseless echo of _I fucked up I fucked up I fucked up._

"Tucker," says Wash, " _don't let him—"_ and then his words turn into a soft, hurt noise, and Tucker can't stand this, he can't—

**_Okay. This is officially too fucked up even for me_** _,_ says Church who _is not_ Church. **_Lemme see what I can do._**

The world goes white with pain.

When Tucker can notice things again, he's sprawled on the ground. He's let go of the gun (like that made a difference) and he's gasping for breath while his body shudders helplessly.

**_Shit. Sorry. The firewalls on this thing are insane. I—I don't think I can shut if off while it's running._ **

Church is dead. He's not saying that. Everyone is dead except Tucker and Wash and he wishes, he wishes they were both already—

"So there you are," says Felix, standing over him.

Tucker tries to say, _Fuck you,_ but he just wheezes. Everything hurts.

Felix aims the gun at his head, and Tucker thinks, _This is it,_ and he's almost grateful.

But he doesn't shoot.

"You know, you are the most pathetic pain in the ass that I ever had to babysit. Wash _this_ , rescue my friends _that,_ O.M.G., do you think I could ever be as cool as a Freelancer?"Felix's foot lands on Tucker's chest, and even through power armor, he can feel the jolt of pressure. "Spoiler alert: Freelancers aren't cool. And you're going to scream more than they ever did, before I'm through with you."

"That's what . . . _she_ said," Tucker manages to gasp out.

"Oh. Wow. Devastating wit. I'm wounded, Tucker, I really am." Then Felix's foot is gone from Tucker's chest, and he's grabbing his arm. "Let's go talk to Agent Washington together, huh? I really want to find out what sounds he makes when I start on you."

No no no he can't do this, he knows what Wash has nightmares about, he can't do this. Tucker jolts back, pulling against Felix's grip, _he can't do this._

Everything's fucked, it's all his fault—

**_It's not real,_** the hallucination whispers again. **_Tucker? Tucker! It's not real._**

Fuck real. Fuck everything. Tucker lunges and manages to grab his gun, and he _wants_ to shoot Felix, but apparently he's still a selfish bastard because his hands are turning it on himself—

**_Are you_ fucking _kidding me?_** Church shrieks.

—and Tucker's awake.

He's alive.

He's shuddering in the medical bed, he knows that bitch scientist is watching him, and he doesn't care anymore. He can still hear the sounds that Wash made, that Caboose and all the rest of them made, and he doesn't—he can't—

It wasn't real. Tucker knows that, even as the adrenaline dumps through his body and leaves him a trembling wreck. Church's voice was just a hallucination, but he was right. There's no way that the others would have given up without a fight.

This isn't even the first time that the machine fucked with his full frontal cortex or whatever, and he couldn't control what he did in the simulation. Tucker _knows_ that.

But it felt real.

He can remember now what really happened at the radio tower. They had the genius and the dog. They had a plan. They were able to stop Felix and Locus, _Tucker_ was able to stop them.

But he wouldn't have. If it had been just him.

Most days, Tucker manages not to think about the temple. The vision that it plunged him into, of Felix and Locus and Felix and _Felix—_

Who is dead now. Tucker knows that. But he still wakes up sometimes, remembering how that knife felt in his gut. Remembering how _desperately_ he wanted Felix to say he was good enough, and how terrified he was at the radio tower, because he had never, ever been good enough.

The thought eats at him even after they drag him back to his cell. There's no sound but his own breathing, and he can't stop remembering Felix's sing-song voice over the radio and that spike of pure terror it sent running down his spine.

If it had been real, if there had been nothing stopping him, Tucker isn't sure he could have given himself up.

"This is such bullshit," Tucker mutters, leaning his head back against the wall. He _knows_ that Hargrove is messing with him, that he shouldn't be falling for these mind games, but every simulation feels so fucking real and then he gets shoved back in this sterile white cell where he's all alone and honestly sometimes it feels like _this_ place isn't real.

He almost wishes he could hallucinate Church while he was awake. At least then he'd have someone to talk to.

The others better get here soon.


	4. Chapter 4

The guards come to get Tucker out of his cell, and he doesn't fight them. He never fights them. He agreed to this, and he knows what happens if he stops playing nice.

But he knows what's waiting for him in the lab, and he feels sick as they march him down the hallway. He's tired of watching his friends die. He's tired of his friends killing him. He wants to know why the _fuck_ the others haven't come to get them yet. It's got to have been at least three days by now.

Sure, he could understand the Reds fucking around and wasting time. Simmons would need to make a spreadsheet, and Sarge would want to build a robot. Grif would just say "meh" and find another bag of cheetos. But _Carolina?_ Being an actual badass is her entire job.

Not to mention that Tucker and Wash are supposed to be heroes of Chorus now. Rescuing them should be Kimball's priority number one.

Hargrove can't be hidden _that_ well.

(He doesn't want to think about the last simulation, where the mercs managed to activate the Purge. It didn't touch Tucker because of the sword, so he spent hours wandering around finding body after body after body— But Tucker knows they destroyed that temple. And if Hargrove _had_ managed to kill everyone somehow, he would have already gloated about it.)

Tucker hears voices, and suddenly he realizes that they're not taking him to the lab, they're taking him to—

—the mess hall?

It must be lunch or dinner, because it's pretty full. They don't take him to the food line, though, they take him straight to a table . . . where Wash is waiting for him.

Helmet off. Two food trays sitting in front of him.

_Wash._

"What the fuck," says Tucker.

"Hargrove didn't want us meeting anywhere private," says Wash, and he's—he's not being shot or tortured or drowned, and he's not trying to kill Tucker, he's just sitting at the table looking tired and stressed like after a really bad session with the new recruits.

Tucker sits down with a thump. Everything feels vaguely unreal. He thought he was heading into another simulation, and here he is having lunch with Wash. Or dinner. Or breakfast, what the fuck ever.

"Private Tucker, status report."

"Oh my _God,_ give that a rest," Tucker says without thinking, and then he realizes that Wash is looking at him with actual concern.

Shit.

He grabs a spoon and shovels a big mound of pudding into his mouth to give himself time to think.

He can't let Wash know what's happening. Wash will blame himself, and then try to take Tucker's place, and the whole reason Tucker got into this mess was to avoid a matinee showing of Wash 2: Now With More Crazy.

"Well," he says, "there's this really hot scientist who can't get enough of me, if you know what I mean."

Wash goes still. "What _do_ you mean?"

"Fuck you, I could totally be banging her!" Tucker snaps, and relaxes when he sees Wash roll his eyes.

"But you're not."

". . . But she just wants a lot of blood samples. Because of the whole alien baby thing." Tucker scoops up another mound of pudding and goes on the offensive. "What's up with _you?_ I thought you made some kind of deal."

"I, uh. Hargrove has me . . . training his soldiers." Wash's voice cracks slightly, the way it does when he's uncomfortable, and all Tucker can feel is relief. Because awkward Wash isn't crazy Wash. Because he's obviously feeling guilty that he's cooperating with the enemy at all, but making Charon mercenaries do squats isn't going to hurt anyone, and more importantly, it's not going to hurt Wash.

Tucker managed to protect him, and he feels fiercely, desperately proud.

He fucking _did_ that.

"So you're finally training soldiers you can _actually_ work to death? It's like all your dreams come true."

Wash mutters something under his breath.

"What?"

"Just . . . eat your dinner."

Okay, so it's dinner time. That's nice to know.

There's something rubbery on his plate that looks vaguely like chicken. Tucker prods at it with his fork, and then gives it a bite.

Synthetic protein. Bleh.

He feels a little curl of unease in his gut, and he's not sure why, because things are _great._ Wash is fine, and he doesn't suspect a thing, and Tucker isn't going to be strapped into that machine for another hour at least.

And then, as he swallows down synthetic protein, he realizes: he's waiting for it all to go wrong.

He's waiting for this to be another simulation. One where the pudding is poisoned, or there are snipers in the mess hall, or Wash just casually reaches over and stabs a knife between the tendons in his hand—

 _"This is part of being a soldier, Private," Wash says patiently. "I need to train you to resist interrogation,"  and_ fuck _it hurts but Tucker doesn't want to fail again so he holds still while Wash shoves another knife in and it hurts it hurts and Church is screaming_ **TUCKER IT'S NOT REAL—**

"Tucker?"

Tucker almost chokes on his food and he's pretty sure his heart literally misses a beat. But he manages to swallow, and then he instantly starts babbling the first thing that comes into his head.

"Yeah, do you think the Army of Chorus gives out medals for surviving enemy captivity? Or chicks. I would take chicks instead of a medal. I asked Kimball about that after the _Staff of Charon_ but she just said some shit about not abusing my rank."

Wash rolls his eyes. "Never mind," he says, and Tucker's heartbeat starts to slow down again.

As long as Wash is annoyed, it's okay, because that means he isn't suspicious.

It's going to be okay.

Tucker has _got this._

* * *

When the guards take Tucker away again, the first thing Wash does is sigh in relief.

Because Tucker's all right. He's obviously tense, more worried than he wants to let on, but he's all right.

And he still doesn't know.

Wash honestly wasn't sure that he'd be able to keep the secret.

Tucker was there in those first days after Sidewinder, when Wash suddenly had no goals, no revenge to carry out, no prison to escape, and his mind started to tear itself apart because pain was the only thing that felt familiar anymore. Tucker was also there after the crash on Chorus, when Wash's brain kept stuttering between the _Hand of Merope_ and the _Mother of Invention_ and simulated crashes that Alpha saw.

And somewhere along the line, Tucker decided that he was responsible for Wash's sanity. There are times Wash still doesn't understand why, any more than he understands why Caboose insisted that they keep him and call him Church—

 _he choked on the name in those first weeks, he told Caboose to shut up again and again until Tucker shoved him against the wall and shouted_ you _shut the fuck up, but Caboose kept calling him Church, Church, we're best friends, aren't we, Church? until Wash said yes because he had used up all his defiance on the Director and prison and the Meta, and he was willing to let these people remake him into whatever they wanted, but all they did was sing him happy birthday, and wake him from his nightmares, and call him Church until the name stopped hurting and for the first time in years he felt like he was truly_ Wash

—the point is, Tucker has gotten _far_ too good at telling when something is wrong. Wash was terrified that he'd take one look and simply know about the cold, foreign weight squatting at the back of his skull. That maybe he'd guess what Wash has started thinking about failsafes and self-destructs—that even if they're rescued, maybe there's no getting the Mark IV out and this time Wash is finally fucked up beyond repair.

But he didn't. He didn't guess, and he's not hurt. Wash has never, ever been so glad to hear Tucker ramble about his chances of banging somebody inappropriate.

If Wash can just keep Tucker safe, then it will all be worth it. Even if he doesn't come back from this, it will still be _worth it._

The thought gives him strength over the next couple days, as he waits for Hargrove to send him on his next mission. He's a little frightened by how easily he starts hoping for the mission, and not their friends—but keeping Hargrove happy is all Wash can do right now.

He can't afford any mistakes.

So he practices with the Mark IV again and again, flips the safety off again and again, lets it spin him through maneuvers and fire his guns and throw his knives. He can do this. He has to do this.

And then finally Hargrove sends him out.

It's the same instructions as last time: infiltrate, and download information from a computer. But this time it's a military base, not far from the ruins of Armonia. Wash was there just a few weeks ago, which means he knows something about where the guards are going to be.

He also knows how unlikely it is that he'll be able to get in and out without hurting anyone or getting caught.

He can't get caught. Hargrove made that very clear: he fails, and Tucker pays the price.

Wash doesn't want to hurt anyone. The soldiers on Chorus trust him, less than the Reds and Blues do but more than anyone should. He doesn't want to go back to being that cold-blooded soldier who would shoot anyone to get what he wanted.

He will, if that's the only way to keep his team alive. Wash isn't proud of that, but it's a fact.

This is also a fact: he will try as hard as he can to find another way.

Several flash-bang grenades and two fire alarms later, Wash thinks he may be able to pull this off. The base is halfway evacuated, and he's at the computer, watching the information download. If his luck just holds a few more minutes, he can get out the way he came and get back to the Pelican, another mission complete.

He thinks briefly of trying to use the computer to send a message. But he's willing to bet that the Mark IV is recording everything he sees. Wash was able to get away with dropping the knife—he was careful not to look at what he was doing—but if he sends an email, Hargrove will probably find out. And there will be consequences.

Wash just has to go back, and trust in their friends to find them.

"Hello," says Caboose, from right behind him.

Time slows down.

It's like the moment that Epsilon tried to kill himself in Wash's head. In those last seconds, their brains meshed, thoughts aligned, and Wash experienced time at the speed of a dying AI, lightspeed compared to human thought but an agonizing crawl for Epsilon as subroutines returned ERROR, ERROR, END OF FILE. Wash listened to his own heartbeat and heard each weary thud minutes apart, and the two of them wished together that it would all stop.

It's like that now.

 _Thud,_ he understands that Caboose is there with him, that there are probably more soldiers nearby, that this is a trap and he might be saved—but Tucker's not here, and they'll kill him if Wash doesn't come back—

 _Thud,_ and he's turning, and he know he needs to stop this, stop himself, but there's no time. There's no time and he's not the one raising his pistol, it's the Mark IV moving him and it says, **_Target acquired._**

He doesn't hear his next heartbeat.

Because the gun fires.

The gun fires and Wash can almost see the path the bullet takes through the air, with the same remorseless clarity that Alpha saw every one of his mistakes. He sees and he sees and he can do nothing, and it's like his nightmares about shooting Donut, knowing what's about to happen and not able to stop it—

_Why did you do that? What's wrong with you?_

Then there's blood spattered around the hole in the visor of Caboose's helmet, and Caboose is falling backward as the Mark IV drones, ** _Target eliminated._**

_I was just following orders._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Taller for continuing to be a fantastic beta. <3

**_simulation_00010_ ** _Wash drops his gun and then Freckles shoots him, bullets ripping through his ribs and his spine, but it's all right because Caboose is all right_

**_simulation_00011_ ** _Wash shoots Caboose but he misses, he misses and then Andersmith tackles him, Bitters takes his gun away and he's a captive and they're going to execute him but it's all right because Caboose is all right_

**_simulation_00111_ ** _Wash shoots Caboose but he misses, he misses and then Carolina shoots him in the shoulder, slams her heel into the wound and grinds down, and she drags him back to a small cold cell without windows and he has to stay there alone, alone forever, but it's all right it's all right because Caboose is all right_

_Caboose is_

_Caboose is_

It's like the ghost of Epsilon, of Alpha, still running calculations in his head. Dreaming up scenarios where he fails and is hurt and it doesn't matter because at least he doesn't kill Caboose.

Caboose is the one who wanted him, who said "Can we keep him?" Caboose is the first one who trusted him, who _saved_ him, and now he's dead.

Wash walks back to the Pelican. He lets the Mark IV black him out into transport mode. When he's back on the _Staff of Charon,_ he hands over the drive of downloaded information. He goes back to his cell and sinks to the floor, leaning against the wall.

_Good to have you back, Agent Washington!_

_I'm pretty that we can trust you._

_I mean we are friends._

He waits.

This is the truth that Wash learned after Epsilon: nothing ever stops. After Epsilon died, after Wash was ready to die, minute after minute after minute dragged on. When he was certified Article 12, locked up and restrained and _done,_ he still kept breathing and waiting and listening to the nurses walk up and down the hallway. He woke screaming in the night, and then he was awake, and stared at the ceiling in weary boredom for hours.

Eventually, that mattered. Eventually, the drumbeat of feet outside his door became more real than the memories, and when he woke after the nightmares, he counted the tiles in the ceiling, and learned to put the memories away.

That won't happen now. It doesn't matter how long Wash waits; there will be no coming back from this.

But that fact doesn't make anything _stop_.

He realizes that he's flexing his fingers, one by one. It's an old habit, one he started when he was Article 12 and his body didn't feel like any part of him. Epsilon unmade him twice: once when he downloaded the memories of Leonard Church, of a body three inches taller and ten pounds lighter, and once when he sent out that _END OF FILE_ signal to every nerve and bone.

For years after, Wash was haunted by the feeling that his body wasn't real. Flexing his fingers was the first way he learned to cope, to make his limbs feel like his own—

_Caboose crushed him into the couch, leaning all his weight on Wash as he said, "Well, I think we should have a movie night, you know, for the popcorn," and Tucker grumbled,"We can't do that because you fucking burned our only movie," and meanwhile Caboose was warm, warm, and heavy, pinning him in place. Wash's heart jerked and rabbited against his ribs, but the pressure didn't turn into pain, and it didn't feel exactly like a trap._

_It felt like an anchor. Like Caboose was pinning him down, keeping him in_ this _body, in_ this _moment, and Wash had an absurd urge to cry because he couldn't remember when he had last felt so real._

_"Oh, my God, remember Mr. Frittles."_

_"Church is not a guinea pig, Tucker. His cheeks are not that fat."_

_"He's not Church, you idiot." Then Tucker grinned at Wash. "Heh, you don't look so badass now."_

—and there's an ache clawing at his throat and Wash can't. He can't _do_ this.

But his heart keeps beating and his lungs keep breathing and now Wash understands Alpha and Epsilon as he never did before. If he could carve out these memories, he would. If he could set every synapse in his brain on fire, reduce himself to ash and echoes, he _would,_ no matter who was left broken in his wake.

Except.

Tucker.

He can still be rescued. If Wash can keep him alive long enough.

Wash isn't stupid. He knows that even if the cavalry comes, he isn't going home. There's no such thing anymore. And he's worked for Hargrove and he's murdered for Hargrove and if Kimball lets him live, she'll put him in prison. Carolina and Tucker, if they don't break in and kill him, will leave him there to rot.

He knows what that will be like. Night and days and nights again with nothing but memories (his and not his) rolling around in his head, until the world feels like it's endlessly expanding and contracting, and sometimes his body is a balloon drifting away and sometimes it's a leaden weight he can barely move and none of it is ever real—

Wash rolls his hands into fists, finger by finger. Takes a deep breath.

There's no hope for him now. But there still is for Tucker.

Once he's safe, Wash can go crazy. He can shred all the pieces of himself that survived Epsilon, that Caboose helped knit back together. He deserves it and he _wants_ it, just as much as he wants to kill Hargrove. But right now, he has to hold himself together.

He doesn't even try to sleep.

He waits.

* * *

The alarms wail on and on forever, the sound slicing through Tucker's head as he stumbles through the hallway. The floor is tilted at a sickening angle, and it makes everything seem—

**_Seriously? We're doing the crash_ again?**

—unreal, especially the bodies, oh God there are bodies everywhere.

Tucker doesn't want to believe this is happening. But it is. The ship crashed, and it's all his fucking fault. He saw that blonde pilot and thought, _Hey, I'm a hero now, chicks dig that,_ and now the remains of the ship are buckling under their own weight and he can hear people screaming in the distance, and he can't find Wash.

Then he turns a corner, and he finds Wash.

He's not sure what happened. The ruins are too twisted and buckled, and the emergency lighting is too dim. It looks like some sort of girder snapped free of the wall, and it's—

It's pinned Wash right through the stomach.

_Like a bug,_ Tucker thinks without meaning to, and he wants to vomit because he remembers middle school science projects and teasing Wash that he was _Agent Cockroach_.

". . . Tucker?"

Fuck. He isn't dead.

Tucker drops to his knees. "Yeah. I'm here. It's okay."

There's no way to get Wash out. The girder probably snapped his spine, and it's obviously holding his guts in. It hasn't stopped the bleeding—there's a huge pool of blood around him, Tucker is kneeling in his blood and he can smell it even through the air filters in his helmet—but Tucker still repeats, "You're going to be fine."

Wash makes this awful choking noise, and after a moment Tucker realizes it's laughter.

"Don't . . . lie to your commanding officer."

"Shut up, you're going to be fine," Tucker repeats helplessly.

"Caboose?"

Tucker feels like his heart stops.

He found Caboose first. He was already dead. Tucker thinks it was fast, and that's his only comfort, but he will never, ever forgive himself—

"Caboose is fine," he lies. "He's already out."

"Good," Wash sighs. "Good."

Then he's still. After a few moments, Tucker realizes he isn't breathing anymore. That's probably all he was holding on for, to know that his team was all right.

Flames crackle in the distance. The smoke is getting worse; Tucker can smell it now, as well as the blood. He knows that he should go, that Wash would want him to go, but he can't make himself move. He's kneeling in his friend's blood and he can't think of a single reason to get up and walk, if he burns alive here then he deserves it, and he is—he is—

He's choking on the smoke, even through his helmet, which doesn't make sense. The filters aren't that busted. But it doesn't matter, Wash and Caboose are dead, and it's all his fault. That's the only thing he can think about, as the world goes dark. It's all his fault.

Then he wakes up.

Tucker wakes up, strapped face-down in a medical bed, with spit and tears and snot puddled around his face, and all he can think is that oh God, the air smells so good. It's such a relief to be away from the smell of blood and smoke, he wants to start crying again.

Then he thinks, _Shit, where am I?_

Somebody's talking nearby, but he can't quite make out the words and his head is spinning. He's—he's with Hargrove, he remembers that now, he got captured at a temple and . . .

**_It wasn't real, Tucker._ **

_Shut up,_ you _aren't real,_ he thinks angrily. Because he remembers that much: Church is dead, Tucker is a prisoner, and he's so fucked-up that now he's hallucinating Church's voice even when he isn't hooked into the machine.

He knows it's a hallucination, because Church was never this nice to him.

**_Okay, you have a point. But c'mon, you remember what really happened, right?_ **

The ship really crashed.

Tucker is sure about that. He'll never forget crawling out of there.

And it wasn't his fault, he remembers that now—it was the mercenaries and the tractor beam, _oh thank God it wasn't his fault—_

And Wash is alive, he knows that, because Wash is why he's here in the machine.

But Caboose?

Tucker feels like his stomach has turned to ice as he scrabbles desperately at his memories. It's so real, the image of Caboose crushed under rubble in the ship—for a moment, he can't remember anything else about Caboose and the crash, and that image of Caboose adopting a killer robot, maybe that's just a daydream, something he wanted to be true—

They've unstrapped him and now they're pulling Tucker up from the medical bed, and he barely notices because he's too busy panicking over fucking Caboose.

**_He's alive, Tucker. I promise._ **

Tucker ignores Church, because he's not real and also fuck Church. If he wanted Tucker to listen to him, he shouldn't have died like an asshole.

But as he stumbles back to his cell, he manages to dig out the memory: Caboose, with a dent in his helmet but still on his feet, yelling, "OH MY GOD THAT WAS LOUD AM I DEAF? TUCKER CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

He survived the crash. He helped Tucker get Wash out of the ship, because Wash wasn't impaled like in the simulation, but he was pretty fucked up anyway.

Caboose is _still_ alive. All those memories Tucker has of him on Chorus are real.

**_See? Told you so._ **

The guards shove him into the cell and lock the door behind him, and Tucker slides down to the ground, sick and shaky with relief.

Shit. He really believed that one. Even after he woke up.

How many simulations has he been through now? He can't remember. But it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between them and reality.

He doesn't know how much longer he can do this.

**_Tucker,_ ** says Church, ** _it's going to be fine. The others will come for us. You just gotta have a little faith._**

"Seriously," Tucker says out loud, his throat hurting, "go fuck yourself."

He listened to Church's goodbye message, okay, he knows all about _having faith_ and it means dying like an asshole when you don't need to. Okay, there were a lot of soldiers on the _Staff of Charon,_ and Tucker doesn't know how the battle would have gone without the fragments super-powering his suit—but they've faced worse odds. They could've won.

He would never have had to hear Delta say, _It was the most logical strategy,_ and Omega growl, _He made us to protect you._

Tucker only went to talk to the new fragments once. He stormed out of the room with their storage unit twenty seconds after he went in. It's fine if Wash and Carolina want to agonize over whether they're stable enough to trust, and if Caboose wants to befriend them, and if Sarge wants to plot ways to recruit them for Red Team. But Tucker?

He's fucking _done_ with asshole computer programs.

* * *

The next day, Wash is allowed to see Tucker again.

He doesn't want to. Wash doesn’t know how he can look him in the eye after what he’s done. But he has to make sure that he's still all right, and he can’t let Hargrove think that Tucker is no longer leverage.

Because then Tucker will be dead.

Wash has gone longer than this without sleep many times before, but he still feels dizzy as he walks to the mess hall. It’s worse when he gets there, and sits down to wait for the guards to fetch Tucker, because the background noise is too much like the mess hall on Chorus. He keeps remembering meals with his team, Tucker and Caboose squabbling together—and Wash has spent so long trying to keep his memories where they belong, but now he wishes he could fall into them and never leave—

“Hey, Wash.”

His head snaps up. Tucker is standing there in front of him, Tucker is—

Alive.

He looks tense, unhappy as he drops into his chair, but what matters is that he’s _alive._

“Status report?” asks Wash.

“Well, I’m still a prisoner,” Tucker grumbles. "Seriously, why the _fuck_ have the others not found us yet?"

He’s sitting kind of crooked in his chair, his leg jiggling. He’s not in his armor, just his kevlar bodysuit, and Wash can’t help thinking how that wouldn’t hold up against a sniper bullet. Or a few bursts from an auto rifle. Or—

“They’re going to find us,” says Wash. “We just have to be patient.”

"Well, that’s easy for you to say," says Tucker. "You get to go out and train soldiers. I’m so bored, I could almost talk to Caboose."

Hearing Tucker say the name out loud is like a knife in his brain, and for a few moments Wash’s head is nothing but a white hot babble of memories—

_good to have you back_ **_simulation_001100_ ** _Agent Washington went rogue and had to be put down I AM AN EMOTIONAL TIME BOMB I’m sorry to tell you_

"—and the food is _shit,_ like, this stuff is okay, but when I'm not in here they just give me—Wash?"

Wash is dizzy, mouth dry, heart hammering. Tucker’s looking at him now like he’s worried, but that's only because he still doesn't _know_.

Tucker deserves to know, Tucker deserves to shoot him in the face, but right now Tucker is a prisoner and Wash can't. He can't let him know that his team is destroyed, one dead and the other a murderer.

"Wash?" Tucker asks again, and his voice is gentle, as if Wash hasn't _fucking murdered_ two of his friends, first Alpha and now Caboose. "Are you okay?"

He just has to hold out until the cavalry arrives. Then Wash will go to prison and Tucker will . . . Tucker will be all right. He has to be all right.

"I'm just fine, Private Tucker," he says.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Extra Content Warning:** this is the chapter with the hallucinated child harm, so if you're really sensitive about that, you might want to skip it. You'll be able to tell what happened from the angsting in the next chapter. Also, warning for hallucinated suicide and some references to the non-con aspect of Tucker's pregnancy.

More and more, there's one thing that Tucker holds onto.

Junior.

Because Tucker, he's a fuck-up, he's a loser, and every one of the scenarios that machine puts him through seems perfectly plausible, perfectly real.

But he knows that he had Junior. Had him, and loved him. There's no way Tucker could ever forget the first time that Junior cuddled up against him. How it felt to run his fingers over Junior's leathery skin, the little bumps and wrinkles, and wonder at how goddamn _tiny_ his kid was. The soft, whiffling little snores that Junior made when he fell asleep.

The moment when he and Junior first arrived on Sanghelios together, when he knew that _his kid_ was part of the peace between their two species. The way that Junior's eyes had gleamed under the light of three suns when they said goodbye. The letters that Junior sent him afterward.

Tucker thinks about all those things, when they throw him back in his cell and he's trying to sort out what's real. Junior is the best thing that ever happened to him, and he can't let him be covered up by the fake memories of the simulations. So he remembers him, again and again, and thinks of how much he wants to survive to see Junior one more time.

There's one thing he doesn't like to remember, though. Tucker's never forgotten it. But he's so ashamed, he tries not to think about it.

Because once, he had just woken up from a coma. Once, he was meeting his kid for the first time. 

Once, he looked at Junior, at yellow eyes and quadruple jaws lined with sharp teeth, and he thought, _What the fuck is that thing?_

He learned to love Junior after. He learned it so fast, some days he can hardly remember there was a time he thought his kid was disgusting. Tucker certainly doesn't _want_ to remember, and he's proud that he's made sure Junior will never, ever know.

(Because he knows what it's like, okay, to know your dad regrets you, and as soon as he really understood what was happening, Tucker was determined that would never be his kid.)

But . . . it's still a thing that happened.

* * *

They drag him into the lab and strap him into the machine.

It's normal now. Tucker doesn't want it to be normal, but this is his life now. This is what he chose. It has to be his life, or it's Wash's, and that's—Tucker can't let that happen.

That's the one thing, in any simulation, he hasn't let happen.

They strap him in and the simulation starts and—

—and he's waking up in Blue Base and he's sore all over. 

Tucker tries to sit up, and the room swims around him for a second. His stomach _hurts,_ not in the awesome-party-last-night sort of way, but in that terrifying, I'm-really-fucked-up way that he remembers from when he got hit by that rocket.

Shit. What happened? There was that stupid quest, and then . . . and then . . .

He remembers, suddenly, waking up at night in the swamp with Crunchbite looming over him. 

_Tucker finally understood why people called them "dinos," because of those reptilian yellow eyes, and "squid-heads," because Sangheili armor didn't cover the mouth, and he could see all four jaws, flexing like tentacles as the thing breathed, all those fucking teeth—_

_"Ugh, you know, on Earth we have this thing called Listerine," he groaned. "Stop breathing in my face."_

_For a couple seconds, Crunchbite didn't respond. He just stared down at Tucker, jaws still flexing, and Tucker felt a sudden wave of dread as he remembered glassed planets and the fall of Reach, stories about Elites being strong enough to snap a man in two, and_ shit if this thing decides to hurt me—

_Then Crunchbite let out a long, stinking, "Honk," and lumbered away to sit at the other side of the camp._

_"Fucking finally," Tucker muttered to himself, and then lay awake for a long time, listening to his heartbeat, telling himself that he wasn't scared of one stupid, stinking alien._

Every night. Every fucking night the thing had watched him, and Tucker feels a wave of nauseous dread, because now he remembers being sick when they got back to base, and what if Crunchbite—

But you can't get flu from aliens. 

_That's impossible,_ he remembers Church screeching.

The next moment Tucker is clambering to his feet despite the pain, because he just. He has to get out of this room, he's going crazy alone in here, and if he can just find Church or Caboose or _somebody,_ he's sure that he'll remember what happened and this weird dread will go away and it will be fine. 

Everything will be fine.

He gets up on top of the base, and there's Church and Caboose and for one second all Tucker feels is _relief,_ that they're here and they're normal and whatever's going on is just more of the usual bullshit.

"Oh, well, look who's awake," says Church.

"What the fuck happened?" says Tucker, but he's already feeling better, because Church sounds like an asshole and that's normal, it's all okay—

"Oh, well," says Caboose, "as you may remember, you were impregnated by an alien visitor—"

And he keeps rambling, but Tucker doesn't hear it because the inside of his head is buzzing, and he's remembering that horrifying sensation of something wriggling in his stomach.

"Can I get the short version of this?" Tucker interrupts, looking at Church, because what's he's thinking, what he's remembering doesn't make any sense. And Church has always been an asshole, but he also doesn't mess around with any bullshit.

"Yeah," says Church. "You got knocked up, you got knocked out."

And Tucker remembers

"Oh," he says numbly. "Right." 

He remembers Doc saying, _Congratulations Tucker, you're pregnant._ And Church saying, _Tucker, don't listen to him, he's a lunatic,_ but now Church is telling him he got knocked up like it's nothing, no biggie, and he can't think how it happened except he _knows_ , somehow, it was that fucking alien lurking over him every night, and then his entire brain seizes up at that line of thought and goes _NOPE_.

"I need to start working out," he says. "Lose this baby weight."

There's more, him and Caboose snarking at Church, but Tucker hardly hears what he's saying. He's listening to his rapid, dizzy heartbeat, and he's feeling the still-healing ache in his gut. 

If he can just keep talking, maybe he can stop remembering when the pain in his stomach became unbearable, and Doc gave him the shot, and _Oops, that wasn't anaesthetic, that was a paralytic—I RELISH YOUR PAIN, MWAHAHAHAHAHA—well, let's just get the little guy out and I can sew you back up._

"You're positive that's a girl," says Church. "How can you be sure?"

Tucker blinks and looks over at the Reds again.

"Dude," he says. "Look who you're talking to."

But the words feel like ash inside his mouth. Because he tried so hard, so _fucking_ hard to start over in Blood Gulch and be somebody cool, and here he is, knocked up like Trisha and Leslie and Carol and _his own mom,_ okay, Tucker isn't dumb, he knows that his parents didn't have some flowery romance, that he was just one bout of hate-sex and a broken condom away from never existing—

"Hey," says Church. "I guess you want to see your kid?"

"Uhh," says Tucker, but he follows Church. Because he's gotta know.

Then he sees it.

And his first thought is, _What the fuck is that thing?_

It's tiny. It doesn't come up to his knee. But it's obviously Sangheili—it's got those four jaws, and as it stares up at him, he can see the jaws wiggling as it breathes, and Tucker thinks he might be about to vomit because he remembers Crunchbite standing over him, and he wonders—

"So this is it, Tucker," says Church. "This is your little monstrosity. Your little abomination of nature."

When Tucker was in Basic, everybody kept joking about how many goddamn dinos they'd get to shoot. Tucker joked about it too. And now he's given birth to one.

"Uh," he says, "what do I do?"

This is his kid but it's also an alien, and his head hurts, his stomach _hurts,_ and he just wants Church to tell him what to do—

"Blargh?" says the creature inquisitively, looking up at him.

"It's easy," says Church. "All you gotta do is put your foot on its neck, and shoot it in the head."

Tucker looks down at the baby alien, at _his_ baby—but he didn't ever ask for it, did he? It's just something Crunchbite did to him, okay, it's not a person it's a _thing,_ and he doesn't want to imagine how it got started—

"C'mon, Tucker," says Church. "Don't tell me you're getting all sentimental and shit."

And that's right, isn't it? When Tucker came to Blood Gulch, when he got out of Basic, he made a decision. He was going to be cool. He wasn't going to be that kid anymore, who cried when he got messages from home.

His heart is pounding. His hands feel numb as he lifts up the gun, aims it at the little alien—this is why he joined the army, this is what he's supposed to do—

But something feels wrong, something's missing. It's not supposed to _be_ like this.

The alien is so small, and for a second Tucker can imagine it snoring, curled up beside him, tiny chest rising and falling—

"Oh my _God,_ just kill it already," says Church. "This is what happens when you fuck an alien, okay?"

Tucker hears the word _fuck_ and there's a roaring in his ears and he pulls the trigger.

The next second he thinks, _Wait—_

But there's already purple blood spattered across the ground, and the little alien lets out this broken hurt cry, and the noise pierces straight into Tucker's brainstem, and it's like the wiring in his brain shifts, realigns, and suddenly he thinks, _That's my kid,_ and, _What the fuck did I do?_

"Shit," says Tucker, breathless with panic as he drops to his knees. "Shit. Uh—hey, little guy. It's gonna be okay." He tries to press down on the wounds, to hold in the blood, but it's too late and there's too much and the little alien shudders against his hands and then it's still.

Dead.

He killed it.

Tucker had a kid and he killed it and it's—it's like the first time Tucker got full-on punched in the face, and it hurt too much for there to be any pain, just and endless, hollow ringing inside his head.

_You killed it you killed it you killed it._

_Him. You could have called_ him _Junior and you killed him._

"Why did you make me do that?" asks Tucker.

He thinks, _Why the fuck did I do that?_

"I didn't _make_ you do anything, Tucker," says Church. "I just asked you to clean up your own mess for a change. But I guess pregnancy hormones make you a whiny bitch. Hey, be sure to throw that thing in the trash when you're done being weird about it."

Tucker can't remember ever feeling this kind of rage before. He surges to his feet.

_"Don't talk about my kid that way!"_

Church laughs. "Your _kid_? Seriously? You just shot the thing."

Tucker's not even thinking now, he just snarls and fires his gun, and for one second he's satisfied when he sees Church stagger back and fall under the hail of bullets.

And then Church is standing back up again, transparent. "Duh, I'm a ghost. Wow, you're really not smart today, are you?"

He's not. It doesn't matter if Tucker can kill Church or not, because he already killed his kid, and he realizes that he's crying now, like a fucking baby, and he can't stop because he can't deal with this, he can't—

He turns the gun on himself and he feels like it's the only good choice he's made all day.

* * *

Tucker wakes up strapped into the machine.

He wakes up, and he's still crying. He can't stop. Because he can't stop remembering what Junior looked like, tiny and broken and _oh fuck oh fuck I did that I killed him I—_

**_Tucker? Shit, man, what happened? They had you locked down so tight, I couldn't get in._ **

How could he do that? How could he _do_ that?

**_Okay, whatever happened, it wasn't real. We've done this before, remember?_ **

Church is just a hallucination, but he's right. Tucker knows where he is now—see, there are the guards hauling him up, and the asshole lady scientist—he just has to think about the moment where everything changed. Where it stopped being memories and started being fake. He tries to get his breathing under control, to stop having hysterics, and as they drag him back through the hallways, Tucker forces himself to go through the memories of the simulation.

Except.

Except he can't find the point where it went wrong.

Because he knows he woke up feeling like shit. And he knows that when he first saw Junior, he thought _what the fuck is that thing._ That's a real memory, he knows that, as he stumbles in through the door of his cell he _remembers_ sitting in this cell and thinking about that memory.

He knows Church wanted to kill Junior.

Tucker stumbles to the ground, numb with horror. He knows he didn't kill himself, okay, but what if that was the only part of the simulation that was fake? What if _that's_ where the nightmare started, when Church taunted him and Tucker snapped?

How likely is it, really, that Lavernius Tucker was ever an ambassador to the Sangheili and stood with his child beneath three suns?

Isn't it more likely that he just imagined he was the chosen one, and a good dad?

**_Okay, seriously? Now you're just being dumb. You remember_ years _of Junior, okay, I am made of motherfucking memories and I can tell you they don't come outta nowhere._**

Tucker remembers a lot of things.

He remembers Caboose dying in the crash on Charon.

He remembers Felix torturing Tucker's whole team to death.

He remembers Wash killing them all on Sidewinder.

Too many memories. They're all too real.

And he knows what he thought the first time he saw his son. That's the one thing that he doesn't remember in multiple versions.

**_Shut up, Tucker. It wasn't real._ **

Tucker's head is pounding. All he can think is, he's doesn't care what's real anymore. Because if he killed Junior, then nothing matters. He's done.

He's done.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Papanorth drew [an amazing fanart](http://papanorth.tumblr.com/post/161857856426/but-are-you-going-to-cooperate-hargrove) for this story, if you haven't seen it already, check it out!!!

There's a weight in Tucker's gut that never goes away now. An ache in his bones. A thought he can't stop thinking.

_I killed him. Maybe I killed him. He was my kid and oh fuck, what if I killed him?_

**_Oh my GOD, stop bitching,_** says Church. ** _I told you, it didn't really happen._**

"The fuck do you know," Tucker mumbles, leaning back against the wall of his cell. "You're not even real."

He picks through his memories, trying to be sure—but the more he thinks about it, the more hazy everything gets. When they landed on Sanghelios together, was it morning or evening? He's not sure anymore. And he feels like there was something funny about the name of the ship that took them there, but he can't remember it no matter how he tries. He can't remember _anything_ about that ship, not even what his quarters looked like, and Tucker is sick with uncertainty.

He wishes he still had the photo of Junior with his basketball team, but it's gone with the rest of his armor. If he could just look at it again— But maybe he never had it. Maybe he never got that email from Junior, written in formal Sangheili: _Father, I have a glorious victory to report._ Maybe he never spent the day feeling like he was going to burst with pride, because his son had won his first basketball game.

Maybe he deserves everything that Hargrove is doing to him.

The door opens. Tucker shudders, he can't help it, because he knows what's coming next. But then he looks up, and it's not more Charon mercenaries, ready to drag him off for another session in the damn simulator, it's—

"Carolina?"

Her turquoise armor is gleamingly perfect except for the one splatter of blood across her shoulder, and she holds her auto rifle with the kind of practiced ease that Tucker still envies. She gives him a little head-tilt.

And Tucker's still dreading the truth about Junior too much to feel feel _hope,_ exactly.But it's Carolina. She's here, that means the others are here, and that means Wash is going home. Maybe it was always too late for Tucker, but Wash is going to be okay.

"Hey," she says. "Ready to leave?"

"Fuck yeah," says Tucker, struggling to his feet. His legs feel weak and shaky as he followers Carolina out into the corridor; he's been sitting on his ass for way too long.

He can hear shouts and explosions and the rattle of gunfire in the distance, but there doesn't seem to be anyone fighting near them. Then there are footsteps, and Carolina's gun swings up.

"Carolina, we don't have much—" Wash charges around the corner and stops short. "Tucker." His voice sounds dry and hollow, the way it gets when he's not sure if things are real. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Tucker lies. He knows his voice is a little shaky, but he's just—he's so fucking relieved, to see Wash on his feet and in his armor and _okay._ Tucker can't forgive himself, but if Wash is okay—there's at least one thing he did right. Some part of this mess was worth it.

"Good," Wash says softly, almost to himself, and then turns away. "We don't have much time. See if you can keep up, Private Tucker."

 _Dude, I'm a captain,_ Tucker nearly complains, but he saves his breath for running.

He needs it. Wash and Carolina charge forward like they're in a race, feet pounding, and Tucker can barely keep up. He's gasping for breath, his legs burning. He tries to say, "Wait up," but all he can get out is a wheeze, and they don't look back.

They don't look back.

Tucker has this sudden feeling like if he falls, they won't turn back for him. They'll leave him behind and he'll never escape. And he knows that's crazy, it's just the simulations messing with his head, Wash and Carolina wouldn't really _do_ that—

As he thinks that, his legs give out, and he falls to the ground. Tucker falls, trying to catch his breath, and he's afraid. His friends have saved him and he's still so afraid.

An armored hand seizes him by the wrist. Carolina.

"Up," she says, and hauls him to his feet, then drags him with her down the hallway.

She came back for him. Tucker is dizzily grateful for that as she and Wash drag him into the Pelican. They don't even take time to strap into the seats; the moment the hatch closes behind them, Carolina yells, "Get us out of here!" and the Pelican rockets into motion.

The sudden lurch is dizzying, but it's comforting at the same time, because Tucker knows this. He's been on, like, a hundred missions for Chorus; he knows this feeling, of everyone piling into the Pelican and then clinging on for dear life as some idiot who never finished high school tries to fly the thing.

They steady out pretty soon. Tucker sits up, sees that everyone is here—Sarge and Simmons and Grif and Donut, and Caboose who has Wash pinned in a hug that looks really fucking uncomfortable. Wash isn't putting up a fight, though, because he's always been soft about Caboose.

And in the corner—

"Is that my armor?" Tucker says.

"I said we should just leave it," says Grif, "but _somebody—"_

Tucker doesn't hear the rest of the complaining. He's diving forward, grabbing at the pieces that his armor. All he can think about is the little storage compartment where he keeps the photo of Junior. If he can just find it, if he can just _see_ it, then he can stop wondering.

It's empty.

His fingers scrabble at the edges of the compartment. There's a hollow ache in his chest. This can't be real. It can't be.

"Tucker?" asks Wash. He's pulled himself away from Caboose. "What are you looking for?"

"My photo," Tucker says helplessly, staring at the suit of armor. "It's gone. Hargrove took it."

Tucker pulled out the photo and showed it to Doyle, he _remembers_ that, unless—unless—

Grif raises his hand. "I vote we _don't_ go back to retrieve Tucker's porn."

 _"IT'S A PICTURE OF JUNIOR,"_ Tucker yells.

There's silence.

Tucker looks up to see six helmets turned towards him, and Wash's eyes staring at him—when did Wash take off his helmet?

"Who?" says Wash.

There's an icy feeling spreading through Tucker's chest.

"Junior," he says.

"Oh, is that what you call it?" Donut asks cheerfully. "Because _mine_ is named—"

Simmons shrieks, _"DONUT!"_ and smacks him in the head.

"Okay," says Grif. "I'm _also_ not going back for Tucker's dick pics."

"Actually," says Caboose, "I think Tucker means the genetically engineered alien-human hybrid he shot in the head. Yeah. Good times."

It feels like all of Tucker's insides give this horrific _lurch_ against his ribs, and he can't breathe, can't—

All he can think is, _nononononono._

Until this moment, he hadn't realized how much he'd believed Church. He'd been afraid, but on some level he'd thought that he didn't really do it, that Junior was still waiting for him.

"What?" asks Wash.

 _Shit,_ Tucker thinks, _shit, I never told him, he doesn't know yet, he doesn't_ know—

"Well," says Caboose, "there was an alien visitor on a noble quest, and Tucker—"

"Fucked an alien and didn't like it," Grif cuts in. "Y'know. Blue Team problems."

And Tucker doesn't want to speak, but he can't stop himself. "He was my kid. Junior was my kid." He's shaking as he says, "I killed my own kid."

There's this way that Wash used to look at Tucker, back in the canyon on Chorus. This look that said, _Wow, you're such a fuck-up, I can't believe I'm stuck with trash like you._

Back then, it just made Tucker mad. It just made him resolve to _never_ sleep in his armor again, and complain even more about squats—sure, there were those times he practiced field stripping his rifle late at night, but it was fucking _boring_ in that canyon, what else was he supposed to do—

Now, though.

Now Tucker looks at Wash looking at him, and he thinks, _Yeah, you're pretty right._

"Wow," says Wash. "You were that desperate to keep partying?"

And Tucker knows he's trash, okay? He knows that he never did anything good with his life until Junior turned up, but he still bursts out, "Shut up! I was—I was—"

He can't finish the sentence. There's no way to make this any better. Tucker had a kid and he shot that kid in the head and there's no way he can ever come back from that.

"Damn Blue Team, killing their own before we can do it," says Sarge. "Don't they know it's against the Geneva Convention to deprive your enemy of the chance to strangle you with his own two hands?"

Tucker remembers pressing his hands against Junior's broken, bloody flanks, and he wants to vomit. He wants to kill himself. He wants some way to make Wash _stop looking at him,_ but he can't and this is what he deserves. Whatever happens to him, he deserves it.

 ** _This isn't real, Tucker,_** says Church, but what does he know? He isn't real either.

"Am I the only one who didn't know about this?" Wash asks.

"I . . . didn't know," says Carolina, and there's a low note to her voice that Tucker's only heard a few times before.

"Carolina," says Wash, "I think we need to deal with this."

Wash isn't looking at him anymore. He's looking at Carolina—Carolina who's a Freelancer, who's gotten revenge for the family she lost, who _isn't Tucker._

**_Listen: speaking as the Galaxy's leading authority on torture by computer simulation— It's NOT. FUCKING. REAL._ **

And Carolina says, "He was on your team."

Wash stands up. And Tucker knows what's coming, knows he deserves it. That's why he doesn't look away as Wash steps toward him. When Wash's armored fingers close around his neck and shove him back against the wall of the Pelican, Tucker chokes, and his feet thrash. But he's still watching Wash, still remembering the moment Wash said _You're not the same person you were back in Blood Gulch._

Until now, Wash hadn't known who he really was, back in Blood Gulch.

"Private Tucker," says Wash, and puts his gun to Tucker's forehead.

"Yeah," says Tucker, closing his eyes, and he's almost grateful. He doesn't have to remember hurting Junior anymore.

The gun fires and it sears through his skull, one instant of pain that shreds him apart and lays him to rest—

And Tucker wakes up.

Tucker wakes up, and he's shuddering in the medical bed, and Church is saying, **_Fucking told you so_** _,_ and it doesn't matter. None of it is real, it's all too real, he doesn't _care_ anymore.

They drag him back to his cell, and he slumps against the wall, just like in the simulation. Is this another one?

He doesn't care.

If he really killed Junior, then it's fine if Wash kills him. It's fine if he doesn't get rescued. Tucker doesn't care about anything anymore.

* * *

Wash is losing time.

He knows that's really bad, but he's finding it hard to care.

He goes to the training room and he says, "Safety off," and the Mark IV says, **_Target acquired,_** and he lets it spin him into motion, welcomes the numb feeling of something else moving his limbs as he lets his mind fray apart—

**_simulation_011101_ ** _Agent Maine is dead_ **_simulation_001111_ ** _Agents North and South Dakota are dead_ **_simulation_1001111_ ** _we couldn't find the body_ **_simulation_1001011_ ** _we have footage of the interrogation_ **_simulation_1011_ ** _I'm sorry to tell you_

—and the next thing he knows, he's back in his cell staring at the wall. His whole body aches with exhaustion, but he doesn't want to sleep. He can't sleep. 

But he does. He falls asleep and he sees the bullet flying forward slowly, like he could just reach out and pull it back. He's screaming but he can't move, can't do anything except watch the bullet crash through Caboose's helmet, splatter blood across the spiderweb cracks of the visor, and _I mean we are friends._

Wash wakes up shouting and clawing at himself. His head is pounding, his mouth is dry and sour. It's the same way he used to wake up when he was Article 12 (except they had him strapped down every night so he couldn't hurt himself, and he wonders how long it will take Hargrove to start doing that.)

He thinks, _I can't do this._

In the same moment, he remembers why he _has_ to do this: because Tucker is still alive. Tucker can still be saved. If Wash just holds on, keeps Hargrove happy for long enough—

It's worth anything, if he can do that.

Wash doesn't matter. His team does. He's known that since Sidewinder.

(He knows what happens when he thinks that he matters, cruel gunshots and _Why did you do that? What's wrong with you?_ )

So he sits up in his cell and he says , "Safety off,"  he thinks, _I'm sorry to tell you, Agent Washington is dead_ —and the next thing he knows, he's strapped into a seat on a Pelican, staring at a whole troop of other mercs, who aren't even looking at him because they know he's one of them now. He's killed for Hargrove, just like them.

_I can't,_ he thinks, because he knows in his gut that they're going to fight the people of Chorus, maybe going to fight the rest of his friends. _I can't do this, I have to do this,_ and he tells the Mark IV, _Safety off—_

**_Target acquired._ **

Wash flinches, his head jolting against his helmet. He's already lifting his gun, tracking—

What?

Flashes and shouts and explosions all around him. He's back at Crash Site Alpha, near the control room for the tractor beam. Wash realizes what this means: Hargrove is grounded on Chorus, he's not hiding behind the moons, they're _so close_ if only help could find them—

Wash is going to kill anyone who tries to help Tucker.

As he understands this, the Mark IV pulls his fingers, fires his rifle, and he sees a soldier of Chorus fall.

_Shit._

Wash stumbles back—he's thinking, _Safety on, safety on,_ but the Mark IV doesn't work that way, doesn't listen to him until the mission is complete; it's letting him back out of this room, but the instant he sees another enemy—

That's when he runs into somebody. Spins around.

"Agent Washington, sir? You're alive—uh, I mean, don't kill me?"

Lieutenant Palomo.

Wash has trained him, instructed him, cussed him out. But Palomo is not part of his team. In the worst part of his heart, Wash knows that Palomo is disposable.

But Tucker was so proud of leading his squad.

Wash is so tired of hurting people.

"Hargrove's on Chorus," Wash blurts out, and realizes the next second that anyone would already know that, because why else would Hargrove try to seize control of the tractor beam—

**_Target acquired,_** says the Mark IV, and Wash is lifting his gun, is aiming—

He thinks, _No._

He thinks, _No,_ and _Stop,_ and time slows down again, fraying into milliseconds as the Mark IV rattles ones and zeroes through his brainstem, reroutes his nerve impulses, and Wash thinks _No, no, stop, NO,_ and he struggles against it, his spine rigid, his fingers numb and shaking—

_he didn't do this for Caboose, he's ashamed of that already, but he didn't have_ time _with Caboose_

—and the Mark IV drones, **_Initiating failsafe_** , and everything goes dark.

* * *

Wash wakes up back on the _Staff of Charon._ He has a dull, aching sense that several hours have passed.

And he realizes: _I disobeyed orders._

Tucker is going to pay for it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were wondering, "Could this fic get any more melodramatic?" the answer is YES IT CAN.

Wash wakes up back in his cell. He's stripped down to his undersuit—he feels raw and naked without his armor—and his whole body aches.

_I disobeyed orders._ _Tucker will pay for it._

The thought drums through his head, over and over. All he's tried to do, ever since they got captured, is keep Tucker safe. It's the only mission he has left, now that Caboose is dead. And now, because he froze up, Tucker is going to be punished.

Just because he didn't want to kill Palomo.

Tucker wouldn't want him to kill Palomo.

Wash manages to get to his feet. Hargrove is probably going to come talk to him soon. And Wash has to have something to say to him, some way to keep him from punishing Tucker for Wash's disobedience.

Why the _fuck_ couldn't he have killed Palomo?

It feels just like Alpha's memories. Locked up alone, knowing he fucked up, waiting to hear how bad the consequences are going to be. He can almost hear the Director's voice saying, _I'm sorry to tell you, Lavernius Tucker is—_

Wash slams his fist into the wall, but the pain is barely enough to ground him. He's on the edge of a panic attack, his skin crawling and his breath fluttering and his mind a swirl of _I'm sorry to tell you I'm sorry **simulation_011111** get me out get me out I'm sorry I'm so tired—_

He takes a deep breath. Rolls his fingers into fists, _1, 2, 3, 4, 5._

He has to _think._ He need a plan. 

Are they still on Chorus? Wash doesn't know how the raid at the tractor beam tower ended. Maybe they've already cleared orbit, maybe Carolina and the rest will never find them—

He flexes his fingers again. _Focus._

Wherever they are, Hargrove still needs someone to work for him. Wash is sure of that. Otherwise, he'd dead already, after the stunt he pulled. Instead Tucker's going to pay for it, maybe die for it—

Unless. Unless.

Wash volunteered to work for Hargrove because otherwise, it was going to be Tucker. Because Tucker doesn't deserve to be strapped down on the medical bed, his implants pried open and an AI jammed into his skull to make him an obedient weapon.

But it's better than Tucker being dead. 

If Wash can just convince Hargrove that he's useless now, that Tucker is the only one who's likely to work for him now—

Hargrove will probably use him for leverage against Tucker. Will certainly punish him. But _Tucker will live,_ and that's all that matters, now. 

It's all Wash can hope for, now.

So when the viewscreen in his cell flickers to life, Wash is ready. When Hargrove says, "Do you care to explain your behavior, Agent Washington?" he just squares his shoulders—

_I'm sorry, did something about my actions indicate I expect to survive?_

—and he says, "I'm not going to work for you anymore."

His heart is pounding wildly. He knows how risky this is. Hargrove could decide to have Tucker shot this minute, but the _only_ way that Tucker gets out of here alive is if Hargrove decides to focus on breaking Wash instead.

Hargrove wants somebody to work for him who knows Chorus, who could be devastating when used against Chorus. Captain Tucker would be a better man for that job than Agent Washington.

(Tucker was a better man even before Wash turned into a murderer.)

"I thought we had an agreement," says Hargrove.

"That was before you sent me to kill my own men," says Wash. " _Twice._ Get Tucker to do your dirty work. I'm done."

Hargrove gives him a couple seconds of that soulless, lizard-like gaze. Then he says, "Perhaps it's time for me to teach you a lesson."

If he hadn't spent so long as Recovery One, Wash wouldn't be able to keep his voice calm as he says, "If you kill Tucker, you won't have anything left to use against me."

"I find that most people become obedient once they're sufficiently broken," says Hargrove. "Lavernius Tucker certainly did." 

There's a roaring in Wash's ears. Tucker seemed okay last time they spoke—but he's not sure how long it's been, he's lost so much time— 

"And I won't kill him," Hargrove continues. "You will. Command code one-one-foxtrot-five."

And the Mark IV drones, **_Initiating remote control mode._**

* * *

Tucker doesn't throw the teleportation grenade fast enough, and the pirates shoot Carolina, rip Epsilon screaming out of her skull, and then kill Wash and Caboose.

Tucker dies alone at Sandtrap, bleeding out while squeezed between the wall and a fallen rock, knowing that no one is coming, no one is coming—

Tucker is extradited to Sanghelios, and they've spent years planning how to punish him.

None of it matters anymore. Because through all of it, Junior is dead and Tucker _knows_ it, even when he can't remember.

None of it is real, and he knows that too.

At some point, he's sitting in his cell again. Is it a simulation? Fuck if he cares.

Church is there. It's nice, having him around. He's not real, but Tucker isn't picky at this point. He can see Church now, a little glowing blue figure floating by his knee, waving his hands as he rambles about something that Caboose once did. 

If Tucker closes his eyes, he can almost imagine that they're back in Blood Gulch, just talking about pointless bullshit. He can pretend it's early days, before Chorus, before they met any Freelancers except Tex, before Junior—

He thinks the name, and shudders.

_My kid he was my kid I killed my—_

"Tucker! You're getting distracted, man."

His eyes open. Church floats in front of him, arms crossed.

"What?" asks Tucker. "It's not like we've got to keep watch on the Reds."

"No," says Church, "but you never know when— Uh-oh."

He vanishes, suddenly, like he's trying to hide. A second later, the door opens, and there are more guards.

"Wow, you guys can _not_ get enough of me," Tucker says as they drag him out into the hallway, but his heart is pounding and the world is starting to feel kind of blurry around him. He knows what's happening, what's going to happen, and he's afraid. Maybe he always kind of knows that everything is fake now, but it still fucking _hurts_ getting shot in the gut and stabbed in the eye and strangled by people in power armor.

It hurts watching his friends die, too.

But it's cool. Tucker is totally cool with this. He's protecting Wash, right?

That's the only thing he's good for now.

They drag him into . . . he thinks it's a training room, maybe. Big and wide, with an observation deck overhead. Hargrove is up there, peering down.

Wash stands at the center of the room. He's out of his armor for once, wearing just his kevlar undersuit, and Tucker would make a joke about it except that Wash is holding a pistol, and his face is, his eyes are—

It's the same expression he had when they pulled him out of his armor on Sidewinder. That look of hurting so bad, he doesn't know who he is anymore.

The guards shove Tucker to his knees and step back.

"Tucker," says Wash, his voice sounding strange and choked, as his hands tighten on the gun.

Huh. Tucker doesn't remember the simulation starting. Maybe it was already running back in his cell. Maybe nothing's been real since they strapped him the first time. That would be nice.

"Pistol-whip him," says Hargrove over the loudspeaker, and Wash's eyes widen.

The next second, the blow slams into Tucker's forehead. Stars dance across his vision, and the pain rings on and on through his head. It takes him a little while to realize that he's on the ground, that Wash is talking. 

"—sorry," Wash is saying quietly, desperately. But he isn't moving to give Tucker a hand; he's standing straight and still, the pistol clenched in his hands. "I'm sorry, Tucker, I can't stop—"

"I'd like to remind you, Agent Washington," says Hargrove, "that you're the reason for this situation."

"If you make me kill him," says Wash, biting out each word, "I will _never_ stop fighting you."

Tucker manages to get back up on his knees. He feels dizzy, but he grins because this is cool, it's all cool. He's been killed by Wash like fifteen times before, he can absolutely take another shot.

"Nah, go ahead, man," he tells Wash. "It's fine."

_You can’t make this any worse, motherfuckers,_ he thinks.

"What?" says Wash, his voice gone small and fragile. 

And then Church appears in front of him, arms waving. "Tucker! Tucker, this is real!"

Tucker stares at him, baffled for a moment. "That's . . . what she said?"

"What did you do to him?" Wash demands, looking up at Hargrove.

Church winks out of sight, but he's still talking silently, in Tucker's head. **_Seriously, man, you're not in the machine, this is real and YOU'RE GOING TO DIE unless you do something!_**

_How about_ you _do something,_ Tucker thinks. _You're Blue Team Captain._

**_Okay, one, Wash is Blue Team Captain now, and two, I'm dead._ **

_The fuck? You're right here._

**_You decided you're hallucinating me, right?_ **

_Yeah, so why should I believe you?_

**_Oh my GOD just get yourself out of here._ **

There's a cold weight against Tucker's forehead.

He blinks, realizes what's happening. Wash has the gun pressed to Tucker's forehead, and _shit,_ Tucker's trying to be cool, but he can't help the way he starts shaking because—

This is such fucking bullshit.

But he has to keep Wash safe.

"Tucker," Wash chokes out. "I'm _sorry,_ they put an A.I. in me, I can't—I can't—"

And he sounds so fucking _broken_ , like he did the time he had to leave Tucker pinned under a crashed Warthog and bleeding out, because Caboose was wounded but could still be saved. Tucker thought that simulation was real when it happened, and he remembers trying to tell Wash it was okay while he choked on his own blood. He knows this isn't real now, but he still can't help wanting to comfort Wash.

"It's okay, dude," he says. "I know you don't want to hurt me."

Wash has never wanted to hurt him. Make him miserable, sure. Drive him up the fucking wall, almost every day. Break him and train him into being a good soldier, absolutely. But Tucker has total faith that Wash has never, ever wanted to hurt him. Ever since Sidewinder, all Wash has ever tried to do is keep Blue Team safe.

All Tucker wants to do now is measure up to that. He can still hope for that much, right?

He knows this is just a simulation, but he lets himself pretend that he isn't alone, that he's talking to the real Wash.

"As long as you're safe," he says, "it's okay."

Wash stares at him. Tucker closes his eyes and waits for the gunshot.

He's done this before. It's going to be fine.

The shot is so loud, it's like a punch to the head. Tucker flinches—

—he flinches and he hears Church says **_OH FUCK_** —

—and he realizes, _I'm alive._

He opens his eyes, and meets Wash's eyes for one instant.

Then Wash topples over. Other people are shouting, but they sound incredibly far away. Tucker is staring at Wash, at the blood seeping out from the hole in his chest, at the way his face is draining of color and his eyes are glazing over.

"No," says Tucker. "No—Wash—"

This isn't right, it never goes like this—he's had to see Wash die a lot of times, but the simulations never have Wash put a gun to Tucker's head and then _not_ kill him—

It's not real. He's going to wake up.

But he doesn't.

The adrenaline's crashing through his veins, is making his heart pound and his hands shake, and Tucker isn't waking up. The blood's spreading out in a pool around Wash, his face is so pale the freckles look almost black, and Tucker isn't waking up.

Wash's eyes close, and _Tucker can't wake up_.

_Shit,_ he thinks, as the guards push past him, and somebody yells for a medic.

_Shit. This is_ real.


	9. Chapter 9

They take Wash away. 

Tucker stares numbly at the puddle of blood on the floor, and he feels sick. He thought Wash was okay. That was why he'd gone through the simulations, why he never fought back: because he thought Wash was okay. 

Because protecting Wash was all he had left. 

But Wash wasn't okay. Tucker remembers the look on his face, the way his hands hadn't trembled at all as he held the gun to Tucker's head.

He remembers Wash's voice, quiet and agonized: _They put an AI in me._

And Tucker's numbness turns to fury.

They _put an AI in Wash's head._

He looks up at the observation room, where Hargrove is glaring down at the chaos.

"What did you do to Wash?" he demands.

"Put him back in his cell," says Hargrove, and the guards grab him.

"You fucking _promised,_ you asshole," Tucker yells, struggling against the guards. "You said he wouldn't get hurt!"

That was the deal. That was why Tucker did it, why he let them strap him into the machine again and again, endured the simulations of being being shot and stabbed and strangled and—

_JUNIOR_

All for nothing.

"You motherfucking— _fucker,"_ he howls, and then one of the guards punches him in the stomach. Tucker spends the next few seconds remembering how to breathe. By the time he can speak again, they've dragged him out of the training room, and they're halfway back to his cell.

_They put an AI in me._

The words haunt Tucker. So does the expression on Wash's face.

He wasn't able to stop himself from striking Tucker. He shot himself because he didn't want to kill Tucker.

_What the fuck did they do to him?_

Tucker knows what Epsilon did to Wash. He wishes he could forget watching the video records from Project Freelancer. And now . . . Wash is . . .

He remembers the pool of blood. The room seems to spin around him, and then he's barfing. 

**_Yeah, you should probably call for help,_** says Church.

"I'm fine," Tucker mutters, even though now that the adrenaline has worn off, his head is throbbing with pain. Something trickles down his forehead; he rubs at it, and his hand comes away red. Blood.

_It's just a little blood, Tucker,_ he can imagine Wash saying.

Fuck Wash and fuck his stupid Freelancer priorities. Why couldn't he have let Tucker protect him?

**_Okay, leaving aside the obvious hypocrisy,_** says Church, **_you have a concussion._**

Tucker's not used to having concussions. He's used to getting shot in the head. He's used to knives in his throat, his hands, his gut. He's not used to being locked up, hurting but not dying, wait and waiting as he remembers Wash—

**_Seriously_** , says Church, **_you're pretty fucked up and_ you need to get help.**

Yeah, because Hargrove is all about giving him help.

Tucker lies down. He really wishes the room would stop spinning. He wishes he could forgot the look in Wash's eyes, as he held the gun to Tucker's forehead. 

He wishes that Wash had just shot him.

That's the last thing he thinks for a while.

* * *

When he wakes up, Tucker feels minty. 

That's the only way to describe it: the green light, the cool, fresh feeling shivering down his spine. It's kind of nice, and for a second he relaxes.

Then he realizes that he's strapped into a medical bed, and adrenaline slams into his chest, sets his heart pounding as he thinks, _No, no, not again—_

**_Relax, dude. It's okay._ **

And Church's voice gets through to him at the same time as he realizes that he's strapped in face-up. He's not in the machine. He's under the same healing tech as when Hargrove first captured him, right after Wash came to him and said, _On your feet, Private Tucker._

Shit. _Wash._

He's strapped down pretty tightly, but Tucker does what he can to lever himself up and crane his neck to look around—

And there's Wash. Just a few feet away from him, strapped into another medical bed, another glowing machine hanging over him. He's almost as pale as when he was bleeding out at Tucker's feet, but he's still breathing. 

He's _alive._

Tucker collapses back onto the bed, weak with relief. For a few moments all he can think about is how Wash is alive, he's right there just a few feet away, _Tucker didn't get him killed._

Except . . . he nearly did.

The knowledge eats away at Tucker. The pain in his head is gone, which is awesome, but that just means he can think clearly now. He can understand how totally screwed they are.

He can understand how Wash is a _fucking liar._ Saying, _I'm just fine, Private Tucker,_ and claiming he was training Hargrove's men. What the _fuck._ If Hargrove went to the trouble of putting an AI into Wash's head, he wasn't just having him run drills. Tucker doesn't know what Hargrove's been making him do, but if he needed to make that AI take control of his body—it's got to be bad.

Tucker remembers the blood pooling around Wash. How _hopeless_ Wash sounded. All this time Tucker thought he was protecting him, and really he'd been hanging him out to dry. Because whatever Wash has been through, it's obviously worse than a few dumb simulations.  

That look in his eyes, that sound of his voice—it's all Tucker's fault.

**_It's not your fault,_** Church says, but it _is._ Tucker remembers Hargrove gloating that Wash had agreed to "cooperate." He thought he'd saved him from that, but instead he was just a hostage. 

Tucker is the _reason_ that Wash had an AI in his head, that he suffered the exact thing that Tucker wanted to protect him from ever suffering again.

**_Wow, you're right, we have so much in common! We both wear blue armor, we're both incredibly sexually attractive, and we're both responsible for Wash getting fucked in the head. Go team. Are you done complaining yet?_ **

_You're such an asshole._

**_And you're a whiny bitch, but we're still stuck together._ **

_I could just stop hallucinating you._

**_Sure, man, go ahead. Give it a try._ **

Tucker stares up at the maze of wiring overhead. He thinks, _Church is dead._

Church is dead. He died, Tucker _saw_ the fragments he left behind, so there's no way that he's coming back now. And Tucker isn't like Caboose, who has to make up imaginary friends when his real ones leave him. 

Tucker can deal with this.

Church is _dead_.

Fuck, Tucker thinks he's going to cry.

He's not _like_ Caboose. Tucker is cool, he can deal with this, he is totally cool. But he's suddenly remembering the weeks he spent fighting for his life at Sandtrap, and how he kept bitching to Church in his head. Kept imagining that when he got out of there, he would tell Church all about it, and Church would pretend to be sick of listening to him but really—

And then Church died. During one of those days at Sandtrap, probably right while Tucker was complaining about sand in his crotch, Church _died_ and Tucker never saw him again.

Never got to say goodbye.

Then they found Epsilon and he turned into Church and it was okay—it wasn't exactly the same, but Church was still an asshole and still Tucker's friend—

Until he left again.

There isn't going to be any last-minute, "Oops, Church is a ghost now," or "Oops, Church left his memories behind and Caboose talked them into being Church again." 

Tucker's all alone. Wash is only a few feet away, but he's unconscious and he can't help and the silence is ringing like a gong in Tucker's head. He doesn't know how long he can stand it.

_Shit._

"Haha." Church actually appears in front of him, a little glowing blue figure. "Toldja so."

"Goddamnit," Tucker mutters. He shouldn't be so relieved, but he is. He can't do this alone.

"Yeah, obviously you can't do it alone," Church says smugly. "Or you wouldn't be hallucinating."

"I hate you so much," Tucker grumbles.

"Yeah, what else is new. Listen, I've been thinking—"

"You mean _I've_ been thinking?" Tucker asks. His brain is so fucked up.

As if he's just been reminded that he doesn't exist, Church disappears. The next words he says silently in Tucker's head: **_I'm pretty sure we're running out time._**

_No, duh,_ says Tucker. _What was your first hint, Wash shooting himself in the chest?_

**_Hargrove's just playing with you._** Church's voice is quiet and serious, and it sends an icy chill through Tucker. **_I've been thinking about it. That machine? Fucking useless for training. It's wired up to some alien shit, and I'll betcha anything it's specifically_ made _to test you with your worst nightmares or whatever._**

_So?_ Tucker asks.

**_So that "deal" you made? I bet he never planned to put Wash in the machine. He just wanted to keep you busy and not trying to escape. And torture you for kicks, of course._ **

Tucker wants to say that isn't true. But the more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes.

He was never protecting Wash. He was never being a hero. All those times they strapped him into the machine, it was never worth _anything._ Right from the start, Tucker was doing exactly what Hargrove wanted, and getting Wash fucked over into the bargain.

**_Okay, relax. The point is, whatever Hargrove is trying to do with Wash, it's obviously falling apart. We need to get a message out._ **

_Can't you, like, hack stuff?_ Tucker asks.

**_Too many firewalls. Wait, you think a hallucination can hack stuff?_ **

Right. It's just so easy to forget that Tucker is actually alone in this bed, that Church is dead for good and can't ever help him again.

Nope nope nope. He's not thinking about that right now. 

But it's hard not to remember the last time he was trying to get off this ship, and—

And Tucker's an idiot.

He's an idiot who let himself get so _completely_ wrapped up in those fucking simulations that he actually forgot they had an ally on this ship. 

"Sheila," he says.

**_Wha— oh. OH._** Church sounds stunned. **_Shit, we're dumb._**

_Yeah, no kidding,_ Tucker thinks, and calls out again, "Sheila?  Can you hear me?"

Silence. Tucker remembers Sheila being able to talk to them from anywhere in the ship—but that was before she helped them escape. What if Hargrove deleted her or something?

"Hey, FILSS," says Church, appearing at Tucker's bedside. "You wanna help us out here?"

Which is pointless, since he's not real, so Sheila can't hear him, but—

"FILSS?" Tucker calls, wondering if the other name will work better. 

There's another moment of silence, and then Sheila says, "Speaking to prisoners is against my programming."

And Tucker feels a chill because her voice is so . . . dead. Low and monotone and hopeless, and _shit,_ he's not getting so close to an escape and giving up now.

"Aw, c'mon," he says. "You don't even _like_ Hargrove."

"Also, you're already talking to us," says Church.

Sheila doesn't respond.

"Look," says Tucker, "I know I'm not Caboose or Church, but . . . this is for _Wash_. You remember him, right?"

He knows she does, unless Hargrove erased her memory banks. Wash told him about how she used to run the training simulations, back in Project Freelancer. She was there when Wash was the rookie on Alpha Squad, and she was there when Epsilon tore his mind apart. The surveilance vids that made Tucker try to drink his ass off—Sheila was _there_ when it happened.

She has to care.

"Agent Washington has been performing sub-optimally for some time now," says Sheila, and Tucker's throat hurts at the reminder of what he failed to see.

"Yeah," he says. "Wash really, really needs to go home. Can't you send a message to our friends? Tell them where we are?"

"Please?" says Church, flickering the way he does when he's really upset.

"That would be against my programming," says Sheila.

" _Fuck_ programming," says Tucker. "Wash _needs_ you."

He waits, but she doesn't reply.

"FILSS?" he says finally.

"Recalculating," says Sheila.

"Uhh," says Tucker, "does that mean—"

"Message sent."

"FUCK YEAH!" says Tucker, and for one second none of the awful things matter. Because Tucker _did it._ Their friends are coming for them. They're gonna be rescued.

"Thanks, FILSS," says Church, flickering again.

"Thanks," Tucker echoes, then cranes his head to look at Wash again. Remembers—everything.

Maybe there still isn't hope for him. He thinks for a second about Junior and then goes _NOPE_ because he can't afford to lose his mind again, and if he thinks about the possibility that he killed his own kid then he is definitely going to lose it.

But no matter how fucked Tucker is, Wash is going to be okay.

He has to be okay.


End file.
